Sept. 22, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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| Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Monday, September 22nd, 2025. | |
| Ray McGovern is here on the latest in Tulsi Gabbard versus the Deep State and other matters involving the intelligence community. | |
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| Ray McGovern, welcome here, uh, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you very much for uh accommodating uh my schedule. | |
| More about this at the end of our segment. | |
| But Ray and I will meet in person for the first time after the many many years we have worked together uh at a rally in Kingston, New York on Saturday. | |
| Scott Ritter and others will uh also be there. | |
| Rally for peace uh by uh Gerald Celenti uh and his wonderful crew. | |
| We'll talk about that uh in a little bit, but of course I'm looking forward to it, my dear friend. | |
| Before we get to the deep state versus uh Tulsi Gabbard or Tulsi Gabbard versus the deep state, however you want to look at it. | |
| What is your take on the now nearly universal recognition of Palestine as a free and independent and sovereign state? | |
| Well, the proof will be in the pudding, Judge. | |
| Uh if they vote on a uh uniting for peace resolution, then this will mean something. | |
| I'm from Missouri. | |
| You have to show me when Keith Stromer changes his mind that says nice rhetoric. | |
| I mean, that doesn't really show me a lot. | |
| So let's see how things evolve this week. | |
| My God, it's gonna happen this week. | |
| We'll see if there's enough support uh against what Israel is doing to unite for peace and send in peacekeepers or people that will suppress the genocide. | |
| That's not impossible. | |
| Let's see if it happens. | |
| Netanyahu, of course, um uh is adamant. | |
| Uh, here's what he said actually earlier this morning uh in Israel, uh, Chris cut number two. | |
| We will have to fight both at the UN and in all other arenas against the false propaganda directed at us and the calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state, which would endanger our existence and serve as an absurd reward for terrorism. | |
| The international community will hear from us on this matter in the coming days. | |
| Of course, a Palestinian state existed in 1948 before the Zionists, they weren't Israelis, the The Zionists uh stole the land and expelled uh 800,000 people. | |
| Yeah, and the British helped that along, of course, and stood by idly. | |
| Well uh many of them were assassinated in hotels and the like. | |
| They just didn't want to have anything to do with they want to wash their hands of the whole thing. | |
| Well, it's not it's not possible now. | |
| The issue is joined. | |
| Now, the question is whether Netanyahu will get the message from Trump that no, this is a bridge too far. | |
| Do not attack Iran because we will not be with you this time. | |
| Now, if that happens, uh, all these predictions about Iran being the next target of Israel, well, hopefully they'll be misplaced. | |
| Hopefully, uh Iran will not be attacked that way because the Iranians have a deterrent for the first time in four millennia, right? | |
| These Persians, they have the deterrent, okay? | |
| Now, would Netanyahu go off half cocked anyway? | |
| Yes, he would. | |
| If he was starting to lose, and that's my concern, of course. | |
| In extremists, he would probably use his nuclear weapons, just the small ones as nuclear weapons, but who would who would dispute the notion that a fellow uh committing genocide and forced starvation would shrink in extremists from using whatever else he has, and that includes nuclear weapons. | |
| That's why I hope that the U.S. policymakers are smart enough to tell him now, forget about it. | |
| We're not going to support you. | |
| If you go ahead, you're finished. | |
| I've asked this question of Alistair Crook and you and Larry Johnson and uh Scott Ritter and uh Colonel McGregor and Colonel Wilkerson and Professor Sachs and Professor Mirshammer and all of our regular guests. | |
| Does Trump control Netanyahu or does Netanyahu control Trump? | |
| This week or next couple of weeks will show what the answer to that is. | |
| Um, you know, I'm not one that thinks that uh Trump has much influence on Netanyahu. | |
| It's very bizarre here, a major uh nuclear state being jerked around by this fellow in Israel. | |
| But if you look at the record, you see that uh apparently Trump sees not much leeway to crush Netanyahu. | |
| And as I've said before, it could be that Netanyahu has a kind of black realm of material on Trump that would send Trump uh spinning and not only Netanyahu into jail uh for that bridal suite that they've proposed for his wife and him once he leaves power. | |
| He's at risk. | |
| He's a personal risk. | |
| We shouldn't forget that. | |
| Do we still have an international rules-based order? | |
| Is there any uh moral basis to the behavior of the Israeli government or the American government? | |
| Well, Judge, you know, as as much as I've looked and Googled and libraries and all, uh there's no definition for the international rules-based order. | |
| It was all made up by these well-heeled people named uh Sullivan and Blinken. | |
| They they concocted it out of thin air, and it was supposed to substitute for the UN and other ordinary legal regimes instituted and implemented after World War II. | |
| So, in other words, then there isn't uh a international rules-based system, other than what Blinken and Sullivan allude to when they say, well, we're gonna do this or we're gonna do that. | |
| And now the rules, the important thing here, and what I find uh some some somewhat hopeful is that the Russians and the Chinese still place considerable merit in working through this international organization, and they're loath to violate uh the laws and regulations of this institution, willy-nilly, like the West has been. | |
| So there's hope there. | |
| And given the fact that the Russians are definitely winning in Ukraine, and that the Israelis uh, you know, I don't think they're gonna prevail in this one if they if they uh letch out uh try to attack uh Iran. | |
| I think that the Russians and the Chinese have already told Iran, look, we're with you this time. | |
| We're gonna make quiet overtures to Trump and say, look, Trump, uh, look, we don't want you to support Israel. | |
| So make sure you tell them this is the last time you supported them back in June, was it? | |
| You're not gonna do that anymore. | |
| That's the only salvation here. | |
| So uh Alistair Crook, uh Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor, are of the view that I think you might agree with this, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. | |
| The tide of support for Israel is turning radically against Israel in the United States. | |
| Hence the Israeli urge to attack Iran sooner rather than later before the tide is overwhelmingly against Israel and Trump will have difficulty politically justifying a backup uh position in the attack. | |
| Agree. | |
| I share that view. | |
| I would just point out that we're already there, okay. | |
| Uh Trump doesn't need any more dissonance to uh to face into. | |
| He knows his problems. | |
| Uh this whole Charlie Kirk thing, these young people, the MAGA people, they don't want, they don't want to have another war, especially there in that part of the world. | |
| So I think the the time is now. | |
| In other words, the the gauntlet has been uh thrown down. | |
| Uh whether the Israelis will listen to Trump, that's another question. | |
| They they probably think they can hit out after Iran, and Trump will have no option other than to come to their support. | |
| So Trump needs to make it publicly known right now that he doesn't want he doesn't want Israel to attack Iran. | |
| It's high time he did that. | |
| That, in my view, would be enough. | |
| Do Russia and China have an interest in stopping the slaughter in Gaza. | |
| Well, I think all nations do except Israel. | |
| I mean, it's such a gross violation of international law, and and the precedent, of course, is the slaughter of six million Jews back when I was young during World War II. | |
| You let this thing, you let this become sort of a normal thing. | |
| You normalize this kind of thing. | |
| And there's no there's no telling where this could lead. | |
| So, yes, that they've been very, very, you know, one thing that people don't know is that the Chinese representative, the top lawyer in Geneva, said, Look, Hamas had every right to do what it did on September 7th, okay? | |
| Under international law, it has every right to fight the occupier to include using violence, okay? | |
| The Chinese representative. | |
| Now, I haven't seen the the Russians go that far, but that is the rule. | |
| Occupiers don't have any rights if people want to throw them off. | |
| So that's international law. | |
| The Chinese have been very explicit about that. | |
| I think that most of the world are behind the kind of solution that will prevent Netanyahu from wreaking more havoc. | |
| Uh shortly before uh or as he was about to leave, shortly before he left, or as he was about to leave Moscow for New York, uh Russian foreign minister Lavrov made some very interesting statements, which you pointed out to me just a few minutes before we uh before airtime. | |
| And so we don't have the actual clip of him saying it, but I'm deeply grateful for what you found. | |
| What did he say? | |
| What's the essence of what my uh friend, I had a very happy uh three-hour encounter with him and a subsequent communication, Sergei Lavrov said about Donald Trump. | |
| He's a very serious man, okay? | |
| And this was sort of the precursor to his appearance at the UN. | |
| He's giving this interview to um to a very well-respected uh uh wire service, and he says, look, um, it's gonna be uh Donald Trump and his team have repeatedly demonstrated, including publicly, that they understand the need to address the root causes of this conflict in Ukraine. | |
| Okay. | |
| Trump has stated publicly on multiple occasions that drawing Ukraine into NATO was a mistake, okay. | |
| These aspirations must be set aside, and security must be built on different principles. | |
| It's a funny kind of dig at the Ukrainian. | |
| So you know, like the Nazis uh you know a generation ago, uh the Ukrainians are uh are destroying books, uh, but they're not burning them. | |
| Here's Lovrov. | |
| Um yeah, the only difference is that the Nazis burn them, well, the Ukrainians who are very tight tight people, they sell them for recycling. | |
| So you have this uh very serious pronouncement uh to a big channel in Russia. | |
| What else? | |
| I'll just say one more thing. | |
| Look, um uh here's what uh he goes on, he says, look, when Trump says this is Joe Biden's war, okay. | |
| What does that mean? | |
| It means that he is not going to give priority attention to resolving it. | |
| Oh, okay. | |
| So it's Biden's war. | |
| Uh uh, he knows that is Put that Trump knows that the Ukraine crisis deliberately created, and Russia had no choice other than to mount the special military operation. | |
| Now we're willing to make calculated concessions, anticipating future maneuvers. | |
| So we can get together on this stuff. | |
| But the big thing is that since Alaska, Donald Trump has unambiguously advocated not for an unconditional ceasefire ultimatum, but for a durable, sustainable settlement represents a significant White House decision. | |
| I see no indication that they have retreated on this issue. | |
| That is, in my view, profound. | |
| Yeah, and you may have been right all along that maybe it was the four or five hours they all spent together in Alaska that triggered this view of Trump and this realization of the view of Trump by the Russians. | |
| Yeah, the fly in the ointment, of course, Judge, is that uh is Trump his own person? | |
| Can he do these things? | |
| And uh one symptom of what he what he has to fight against is this battle royale that's going on now by the deep state and the media and the Dems Democrats to make sure that uh the deep state is not exposed and that people like the CIA director John Brennan and the FBI director James Comey don't uh don't end up in jail. | |
| Now, Tulsi Gabbard has the book on them, and she she released several chapters of that book, playing the ointment. | |
| Uh not many Americans know about it because it has been sort of disregarded or suppressed to the mainstream media. | |
| Now they're coming after her, okay? | |
| I don't know if she's going to survive. | |
| If she doesn't survive, I'm Vladimir Putin. | |
| I'm saying, oh my God, what kind of flexibility does the president of the United States have when he wants to do something? | |
| When you say Ray, they're coming after her. | |
| Who do you mean when you say they? | |
| And what will they do to her by coming after her? | |
| Well, there've been a whole host of uh White House advisors talking to places like the Daily Beast about how terrible it is that Tulsi Gabbard took away the security clearances of 37 people are all good guys, including the chief of staff of Adam Schiff. | |
| He was a wonderful guy. | |
| Well, you know, I I just have surprised as hell that the Tulsi moved the Tulsi moved so dramatically, so unequivocably, and now she's gonna she's gonna face the consequences, and whether Trump throws her under the bus, Bush under the bus or not, and I think there's an equal possibility he will. | |
| That will show the Russians that wow, we gotta be really careful dealing with this guy because he's not his own man. | |
| These people that surround him uh have no good intentions toward us, and the military is part of that military industrial congressional democratic media complex. | |
| Does um uh the intelligence community play any role in this uh recognition of the Palestinian state? | |
| In other words, did the CIA tell the president that they learned from MI6 that this is what the British are going to do long before they did it? | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| Uh MI6 and CIA very close joined it. | |
| They have, but there have been many instances having to do with Ukraine itself where I think the CIA was kept in the dark until MI6 had consummated the operation, so to speak. | |
| But it's not really a matter of intelligence, a matter of policy. | |
| And uh, if Trump doesn't see that handwriting on the wall now, with the whole world turned against him, and Poutin sort of fighting a defensive maneuver for Trump saying, you know, when we were we were all together there in Beijing, there wasn't one word of criticism of President Trump. | |
| No, now that's strange credulity, but the fact that he says that he's trying to leap leave up with all the avenues so that he can cajole Trump and say, look, we have no evil intentions toward you, try to try to overcome your opposition, and we can deal because we have flexibility, is what Lavrov says in this uh pre-UN interview. | |
| I wonder where um Keith Kellogg is in all of this. | |
| You remember that absurd clip that you and Larry and I analyzed and laughed over, where he says uh uh Russia's losing, Russia's losing, Russia's losing, and he goes on to articulate his own uh ignorance. | |
| But he may be whispering this stuff into Trump's ear. | |
| Well, I'm sure he's trying to. | |
| What disturbed me most about that whole thing was he claimed that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff uh shares his views about this whole thing where Russia is not winning, that we're gonna win, and that uh, you know, it it's just really awful because this is the intelligence that was served up to Biden, for God's sake. | |
| And the fact that Tulsi Gabbard has cashiered many of the people who are working on Russian foreign policy because of their idiotic recommendations with respect to Ukraine and everything else, telling Biden, oh yeah, that the uh that Putin had already lost his army has been revealed to be inept, you know, all this stuff was really pretty. | |
| Who did that stuff? | |
| We know the names now. | |
| Scott Ritter has done a wonderful, wonderful article revealing some of the names of the the top women who were in charge of the Russia uh mission. | |
| Now there are there are equal number of idiot males, of course, but these two happen to be women, and uh there's another woman, a deputy national intelligence office. | |
| That's pretty high ranking, okay, who tried to go to all the committees, tried to go to all the inspectors general and tell them, look, John Brennan is trying to get me to write something I don't believe. | |
| Please, please intervene. | |
| They all turned her, turned her away. | |
| Well, now Tulsius got her, and Tulsi has said all kinds of other people are coming out of the woodwork to tell the real story about how John Brennan pretty much concocted this whole thing all by himself with five very malleable analysts that that were trained to hate Russia from the beginning. | |
| And we see how they came out in that January 6, 2017, intelligence uh community intelligence assessment, which was not a community, and it wasn't intelligence. | |
| Yeah, it was an assessment, but it was based on phony information. | |
| The New York Times crowded about it. | |
| Here's one thing. | |
| These guys won Pulitzers for printing this trash, okay? | |
| Now that's some money attached to those. | |
| Well, a Pulitzer committee say, oh my God, give us give us some, give us some money back. | |
| I don't think so, but something has to be done about these guys that feasted off what they were told by the PR people at the CIA and uh NSA and at DIA and mostly uh the FBI. | |
| Well, it was a charade. | |
| It was a uh very consequential charade because it it ended up with most Americans believing that the Russians were were the devil incarnate, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And if Trump wanted to send troops into Ukraine right now, most people would be still persuaded. | |
| Look, they put Trump in. | |
| Now he knows what he's doing. | |
| He's good, they probably would support it. | |
| That's why it's when she um when uh Director Gabbard removed the security clearances of people. | |
| Were these active duty agents or were these retired people like uh Jack Brennan? | |
| Uh some of them, well, both, Judge. | |
| Okay, so if you are an active duty agent like you once were, right, and your security clearance is removed. | |
| Can you keep your job? | |
| Well, I go to the library and I stack the books there. | |
| I mean, they won't fire me. | |
| Uh they'll let me live out my tenure. | |
| Um, but no, I can't do my job. | |
| I can't analyze what's going on in Russia. | |
| So it's just a serious thing, but it's so so appallingly transparent that when they take the security uh the security clearance away from the fellow that John Radcliffe was gonna appoint a very important job and then reveal his name. | |
| Give me a break. | |
| Everyone knows who this guy was, who he what he did before, and he deserves richly to have his security uh clearance uh revoked. | |
| Is Rat could John Radcliffe, the director of CIA adverse to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. | |
| Is he part of and on the side of the deep state? | |
| You always ask the most intrinsic questions there, Judge. | |
| I don't know, but it's very suspicious. | |
| Now, when Ratcliffe knew that Tulsi was gonna release all this stuff showing chapter and verse about how the deep state, the media, and the Dems did this stuff called Russia Gate, John Ratcliffe did a sort of a preemptive move move. | |
| He put out a he put out a memo that was uh drafted by the head of intelligence in the CIA, and the trade crap was really pretty good, actually. | |
| It was very, very good. | |
| And uh, you know, so he he tried to tame this thing down, try to preempt it. | |
| It was silly. | |
| I mean, he couldn't preempt it. | |
| He didn't name any names, he just said, Well, no, it was we reviewed this uh or the intelligence it was not bad. | |
| Well, give me a break. | |
| Was awful. | |
| It was contrived, it was made out of whole cloth. | |
| We pointed it out at the time we couldn't get any hearing. | |
| Your program was not in being at that time, Judge. | |
| I regret that very much. | |
| Sounds to me as though um a Ratcliffe is adverse to her. | |
| Well, you know, it's it's an old problem. | |
| He is uh in theory subordinate to her, okay. | |
| She's at the top level, director of national intelligence, so the FBI intelligence, CIA, NSA, DIA, they all are supposed to be uh guided by Tulsi Gabbard to include giving Gabbard uh free warning for covert action operations. | |
| Now that's in the law, okay, whether he do that or not, I don't know. | |
| So it's a notional thing that she's in charge, but Radcliffe has got all these people hangovers from hangers on from other regimes, and uh Tulsi has just uh hit the surface here in in uh in dismissing the the major ones. | |
| Now that said, I have to add that you know I was always reluctant to say the CIA should be abolished and you know, throw it out, uh you know, make some uh give the covert action to to the Pentagon where it belongs, if anywhere, and and I don't know what you do about the analysts. | |
| Maybe good luck in setting up an independent agency, but but then I thought, oh my god, there are still honest people there. | |
| They were the ones that said Iran has not worked on a nuclear weapon since 2003, repeating that every year until this year, March 2003, 2023, no, March 2025, and what? | |
| Well, do we know that anymore? | |
| We're not sure. | |
| Why? | |
| Because the IAEE folks are out of there. | |
| But during that entire time from uh from 07 until earlier this year, March, when Tulsi Gabbard gave the the briefing to Congress, uh, they were stalwart in saying there is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. | |
| Do not be deceived. | |
| Yeah, they're working on refining uranium plutonium milk, but they're not working on a weapon. | |
| And if you don't have a weapon, you don't really have a threat. | |
| So what am I saying? | |
| I'm saying that I said, Ray, it's good that you didn't decide to advocate the destruction of the whole agency. | |
| These guys are honest. | |
| And now Tulsi Gavard tells us that all kinds of other people are coming out of the woodwork, spilling the beans on what John Brennan did. | |
| And what he did was the worst kind of sin that you could possibly do. | |
| It was akin to what his what his sponsor, George Tennett did before Iraq, served up information. | |
| There was well, as John Rockefeller put it. | |
| What do you say? | |
| It was uh uh it was contradicted. | |
| It was uh it was even not oh non-existent was his last adjective. | |
| Non-existent intelligence. | |
| What's that look like? | |
| Yeah, made up of a whole cloth. | |
| Thank you, Ray. | |
| What a fascinating conversation. | |
| Now, what are you and I doing with Scott Ritter on Saturday? | |
| Well, we're speaking uh under the sponsorship of Gerald Celenti. | |
| Uh, I'm delighted to be thrown in with all these folks, and and uh I'm gonna be up there, and I'm looking forward to meeting you, Judge. | |
| Uh be kind of nice to meet you uh in person, not having uh done that so far. | |
| And we have you know we have uh Scott Ruder be there, Dennis Kucinich uh will be with Dennis in the days prior. | |
| Roger Waters, my God, we'll have him piped in. | |
| That's going to be a peace and freedom rally of the kind that Gerald Salency uh is very well uh prepared to do. | |
| Finally only Celente could pull us off. | |
| It's this Saturday, September 27th, starting at two in the afternoon in Kingston, New York, which is about a two-hour ride north uh of New York City, very, very old town, the arguably the birthplace of democracy uh in the new world in a beautiful garden and an outdoor field. | |
| If the weather cooperates, uh you'll see us all. | |
| Celente, Ritter, Joe Loria, Dennis Gusinich, Ray McGovern, uh, Randy Cratico, uh, and Roger Waters uh via a video feed. | |
| And as odd as this business is where you work with people all the time, you and I work together twice a week for four years now, and had many communications before that. | |
| We've never been in the same room at the same time on Saturday. | |
| We shall a word on Gerald Celente, okay? | |
| The reason he can do all these things and do them so well is because he's from the Bronx. | |
| And if you ask, and if you ask him, he will tell you. | |
| I have to I have to ask him what neighborhood, because we may have grown up together. | |
| Wow. | |
| Thank you, Ray. | |
| Uh, but before Saturday, I will see you Friday uh with Larry Johnson for the intelligence community roundtable as usual. | |
| All the best, my dear friend. | |
| Thank you. | |
| You too, George. | |
| Thanks. | |
| And the aforementioned Larry, of course, is coming up here at Larry Johnson at 11:30 this morning. | |
| And Harrison Berger. | |
| What is the CIA doing to your civil liberties? | |
| And what about this TikTok deal? | |
| Who's going to control the algorithms at two o'clock this afternoon? |
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