All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:19
Phil Giraldi : CIA Unleashed on Venezuela.
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025.
My dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us.
Phil, welcome here.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
I missed you last week.
Of course, I was on the other side of the globe, as you know.
I want to talk to you about a terrific piece you just wrote about President Trump unleashing the CIA in Venezuela.
But before we get there, do we know if Russia or the United States canceled the Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest?
Well, from what I've seen, I've been reading a lot in the European media, which essentially must be picking up stuff from the Russians.
It seems that this was a Russian initiative.
The Russians just decided there was no point in discussing this after having had a, I guess, a phone chat with our esteemed Secretary of State, which seemed to indicate that there was no common ground in terms of discussing the redline issues that the Russians have been talking about since this conflict began.
Sergei Lavrov keeps saying we must address the root issues.
We all know what those root issues are, Ukraine's neutrality, long-range missiles, and Ukraine's application for NATO.
Here's an interesting comment that he made, harshly critical of the Europeans attempting to lobby, quote, our American colleagues.
I'll let you analyze it after you hear it.
Chris number 16.
Let me reiterate.
An immediate ceasefire, suddenly back on the agenda, as opposed to addressing the root causes of the conflict, would mean only one thing, that a vast portion of Ukraine remains under Nazi rule.
It would be the only place on earth where an entire language is banned by law, a language that incidentally is one of the UN's official tongues and the native language of Ukraine's majority population.
Those now lobbying our American colleagues to abandon their stance on long-term sustainable settlement, to simply stop and let history judge, are the same forces behind this push.
We know who is handling this.
Zelensky's European patrons and masters.
But such an approach runs entirely counter to what Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump agreed upon in Anchorage.
Focusing on root causes, rejecting Ukraine's NATO integration, and fully securing the lawful rights of Russian and Russian-speaking populations.
We remain ready to continue this work.
I didn't know they agreed on anything in Anchorage.
So it seems.
I mean, basically, I mean, all they came to a common understanding was that something that they want to call or don't want to call, depending on how they look at it, a ceasefire, which of course is a non-step, as has been demonstrated also in Gaza.
And the fact is that this goes nowhere when the root causes, as Lavrov correctly describes them, are in dispute.
The fact is that Russia started this war because a considerable hunk of land, which traditionally, historically, prior to 1956, when Khrushchev changed the borders for some reason, prior to that time, this was part of Russia.
And these are Russian speakers.
These are ethnic Russians.
And they were being attacked by militias from the Ukrainian side.
And Ukraine was not interested in discussing the issue.
And so that's in a way the trigger.
And that's what Lavros was just referring to.
And of course, since that time, it's been a question of the U.S. destabilizing the entire area, going back to The U.S. and Victoria Newland and company interfered in an Ukrainian election to bring in the party that was hostile to Russia.
And since then, it's been unstable all the time.
And this is what the outcome of that kind of interference is.
Russian and Western media have been reporting the Russians were a day ahead on this, claiming that President Putin told President Trump during their 90-minute telephone conversation last week that Zelensky better give up the ghost or quote.
Now, this is the English translation of what he allegedly said.
Obviously, I don't know the Russian words.
Ukraine will be destroyed.
And apparently, this is what Trump told Putin in private when they met the day in person, the day after the Trump-Putin phone call.
What's your take on this?
My take on that would be, I would like to see what the Russian word allegedly was.
The one that's translated as destroyed.
Yeah, but there are a lot of symptoms, I'm sure, in Russia for what that word was.
And I would suspect maybe it was more something like defeated or something similar.
And certainly Trump is not a reliable resource for repeating anything that he hears or is told or what he thinks he understands.
I mean, do you honestly think that Zelensky can negotiate for, let's say, a standstill, a peaceful settlement, Russia keeps what it has, and expect to stay alive?
I think that's one of the big issues.
And it's kind of like Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
If the war there ever ends, he's going to be in jail.
Well, I think Zelensky won't be in jail, but he will be dead, dead, dead, because he has plenty of people lined up who are dissatisfied with what he has been doing and how he's been doing it.
And there are plenty of people who are willing to come to some kind of accommodation inside Ukraine within the bureaucracy.
Wow.
Are these likely the people that Sergei Lavrov referred to as Nazis?
Some of them certainly are.
You're talking about the Stefan Banderas folks.
Yeah, those people, obviously, for reasons that would be somewhat incomprehensible for people like us, are very interested in keeping this war going for ethnic and various sociological reasons.
And I think that's what we're looking at.
Wow.
You mentioned Gaza.
What are the Israelis likely to be doing as excuses for the reintroduction of the bombing campaign in Gaza?
Well, the Israelis have discovered or discovered a long time ago that they don't really have to come up with any credible reasons.
In this case, they're claiming that what Hamas was doing in terms of rounding up people that they thought were informing the Israelis and using this as a pretext to say that Hamas and the Gazans had broken the phase one ceasefire.
But of course, that in a way misrepresents what was taking place and why it was taking place.
And everyone who I know certainly everyone virtually on your program who has looked at the issue has been expecting that Israel would use some kind of excuse, any kind of excuse, or no excuse at all to resume the killing in Gaza.
And that's what we're seeing.
Wow.
Let's talk about Venezuela.
I mean, this may sound ridiculous and almost sophomoric, my question, but it has to be asked.
Aren't covert operations supposed to be covert?
I mean, this is absurd, but I have to ask it in light of what happened.
Yeah, they're referred to in the trade as covert action.
So in other words, you're doing something, but you're hiding it.
And The basic reason why an organization was like the CIA was even created back in 1947 was to be able to carry out intelligence, meaning collecting information operations without exposing your hand, without making it clear that that's what you were doing.
And there was a good reason to be able to do that because you don't immediately want to put these potential adversaries up on high alert.
So you try to do it in a covert fashion.
Donald Trump does not seem to understand the meaning of the word covert.
And I was totally shocked when I was reading how he was openly discussing how he was going to turn the CIA loose on Venezuela.
And he also modified it by saying, yes, and they will have a lethal mission.
Does he understand what lethal means?
Wow.
And apparently not.
And all he's doing, and I was a CIA officer under cover for something like 20 years overseas and Middle East and Europe.
And I was under cover of various kinds.
I was a diplomat, which provides you certain protections.
I was in military missions, which again provides you with certain protections under the bilateral laws that govern that kind of thing.
And I was also, you know, pretending to be a businessman from various countries with passports and fake passports and things.
So now all that Donald Trump has done, he's tipped off the Venezuelans that the CIA people are going to be around.
They're going to be looking for them.
And if they catch them, they're going to kill them.
So because we have no diplomatic, let me make sure I understand this.
Because we have no diplomatic relations with Venezuela, there are no CIA guys who can work in the embassy under official cover.
So they work under, and I'm using your terminology that you taught me.
If I have this incorrect, please correct me, Phil.
They work under non-official cover, which is really no cover at all.
They can be summarily executed or worse if caught.
Yeah, that's exactly the distinction.
Trump put targets on these people effectively, put targets on these people's backs.
Well, he's basically raised the flag and told them, look, we're coming after you people.
And of course, the implication will be that whatever CIA people are using these non-official covers where they have no protection, these people are targeting the government.
They might, for example, be, I suggest advising Maria Machado, the woman who just got the Nobel Peace Prize, because she's one that's interested in bringing down the current government in Venezuela.
And she's interested in doing it with the assistance of the United States.
She admires Donald Trump very much.
Who else does she admire?
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yes, isn't she a Mossad asset?
She's probably a Mossad asset.
And I believe the Israelis have an embassy in Caracas, which means that their people probably have more protection than the CIA people that Mr. Trump has just exposed.
Phil, I love you, and I don't want to give you a heartburn, but here's one of President Maduro's fiercest opponents in the United States Senate.
You may have seen this, but Chris just dug it up for you.
That's not putting America first.
It's not ending wars.
It's starting them.
No, it's protecting America greatly.
Narcoterrorism is a huge threat to our country.
More people die from drug overdoses than die from any terrorist activity.
Venezuela is the center of the storm.
The guy is indicted, and there's more coming.
We're not going to sit on the side of the city.
No, you know what you're doing.
You're saving American lives.
Every time you blow up one of these drug votes, you're saving.
You know, Maduro's on bar time.
I hope.
I hope that.
Wow.
So here's a lawyer who took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and he defends execution before indictment, trial, conviction, even for crimes for which the government does not prescribe execution.
Yeah, and there was another killing yesterday in the Pacific Ocean.
Obviously, these would appear have been from Ecuadorians or Colombians.
And as usual, our dear senator from South Carolina doesn't even have his facts right.
Most of the drugs coming into the United States do not come in from Venezuela.
Venezuela is not the source.
The people in the Food and Drug Administration have long said that the stuff that comes in by water comes primarily from Colombia and Ecuador.
That's one on the Atlantic side, one on the Pacific side.
And most of the stuff actually comes in over land.
Wow.
Why do you think Trump truly wants to either capture or kill President Maduro?
Is it to give his oligarch buddies access to Venezuelan oil?
Well, it would seem that the only clear incentive, well, let's take it back a step.
I mean, if countries go to war, it's usually because one country is threatening the other or doing something to destabilize the other.
Now, if you're looking for what Venezuela can do to damage the United States, you come up with nothing.
So there's no reason why the United States should have this hatred for Venezuela.
Does Venezuela pose any threat to American national security?
It doesn't at all.
And the only thing I can see is we have the usual brain-dead Donald Trump, who in 2019, his first term in office, tried to claim or sought to claim that there had been an illegal election in Venezuela and Maduro had cooked the books.
And there was a long kind of back and forth going on, how the U.S. was supporting the Speaker of their National Assembly and so on and so forth.
And this obviously went nowhere.
I just think Trump is, you know, Trump.
Trump, one of the interesting things about Trump for someone who's as ignorant as he is, is that he never forgets his enemies.
And so Maduro is on the enemy list.
He wants to get rid of them.
And he's got enough Republican support to keep this kind of thing going.
And we're going to wind up in a war.
There are 10,000 U.S. troops in the Caribbean region right now, eight warships at the last count I saw.
And, you know, this is going in a wrong direction.
And this past week, we've also managed to offend Colombia, which protested about some of these at-sea interdiction killing people without any due process and without any evidence that they were doing anything.
Can I modify slightly what you said?
I'm just going to add one word in front of the word war.
Undeclared.
Is there going to be a great debate on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate in which somebody will outline the dangers to American national security and why under the Constitution and their international law, we should attack another sovereign country?
Of course not.
Well, they didn't do it over Iran.
They didn't do it over Yemen.
So I guess they feel that he can do it.
He has said that he, as president, should be able to do whatever he wants.
That's obviously something he believes.
I want to go back to Israel for a minute.
Again, this is going to give you a heartburn.
This is the latest from something called Drop Site News about Jared Kushner confirming what parts of Gaza will be reconstructed, presumably by one of his construction companies.
I think we have this on a clip, Chris.
No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls.
And as far as the demilitarization goes, once the ISF is up, there needs to be a security force that they can feel safe from in order for it to be the transition to be complete.
So that needs to happen.
There are considerations being happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live.
So that's one of the many things being considered.
Right now, again, there's been several work streams that have occurred over the last years.
Those are all being synthesized and updated here at the center.
And then they'll go before President Trump and the Board of Peace to get recommendations on what to build, how to phase it.
But that's definitely something now that's being very strongly considered.
The United States has designated his son-in-law to be the official spokesperson for the U.S. government and the developer of the areas of Gaza under Israeli control.
But Gaza is part of Palestine.
How could any of it be under Israeli control?
And isn't there some sort of an agreement that was just flamboyantly signed?
No Israelis and no Hamas there, but flamboyantly signed by many countries, either in Khyber or in Sharm el-Sheikh last week.
And didn't that provide for the Israelis getting the hell out?
Yeah, that was one of the key points of the agreement, such as it was, was that the Israelis would be basically evacuating.
Now, the situation has changed somewhat, and the U.S. obviously is clearly accepting it, which is the Israelis are, at this point, they've drawn what they call a yellow line inside Gaza, which they initially were calling a security zone.
You know, you always say security when you're at a loss for anything to say.
And this is 53% of the Gaza Strip as it is right now.
And of course, when you control that, you control the rest of it too.
It's an easy rifle shot from there to the rest of it.
And so this is an atrocity.
And I saw him and his buddy Steve.
Yeah.
And they were denying that there was a genocide.
Oh, yeah.
You know, we played that.
And then we played it.
CBS complained to YouTube that we took their product and we appealed.
And we'll probably win the appeal because it's very newsworthy what they said.
But they both said no genocide.
It's enough to make your stomach crawl.
I'm going to play the Kushner clip again because Chris has enhanced the volume, particularly important for our friends who come to judging freedom on audio only.
So, Chris, let's play it again.
No reconstruction aid, no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls.
And as far as the demilitarization goes, once the ISF is up, there needs to be a security force that they can feel safe from in order for it to be the transition to be complete.
So that needs to happen.
There are considerations being happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live.
So that's one of the many things being considered.
Right now, again, there's been several work streams that have occurred over the last years.
Those are all being synthesized and updated here at the center.
And then they'll go before President Trump and the Board of Peace to get recommendations on what to build, how to phase it.
But that's definitely something now that's being very strongly.
And I suppose once the reconstruction starts, the genocide will resume.
They're not going to build beautiful roads and bridges and high-rises for the Palestinians to live in.
They're going to build them for Kushner to sell to wealthy Israelis.
Absolutely.
I mean, this whole idea that he's spouting there that essentially the IDF will provide the security for this reconstruction to take place is insanity.
They're the ones who destroyed it.
Correct.
Oh, Phil, this is just utter madness.
Whatever we're talking about, Ukraine, Rubio, and Venezuela, Kushner, and Gaza.
And I'm deeply grateful for your intellectual honesty and courage and the strength with which you make these arguments.
Here's a full screen from today's New York Times.
Nations hesitate to send troops to Gaza fearing clashes with Hamas.
Representatives from several countries, seen as likely participants, have said privately that they will not commit troops until there is more clarity about what the force will be expected to do once it arrives in Gaza.
Okay, I get it.
So the Turks or the Egyptians or the Jordanians are going to send troops into Gaza to do what?
To shoot at the IDF to prevent it from killing Gazans?
Is that what those troops are going to do, Phil Giraldi?
Well, I think you have to realize, since this is an article in the New York Times, it's going to be Israel-centric.
So, I think a lot of these countries will have concerns about sending troops into Gaza because the IDF is there and the IDF is inclined to do crazy things under orders from Mr. Netanyahu to provoke incidents that will then be twisted and distorted to make it look like it was the Palestinians who done it.
And the U.S. will back them 100%.
Which country poses a greater threat to the national security of the United States, Venezuela or Israel?
There's no question.
The United States controls a large slice, or Israel controls a large slice of U.S. foreign policy and domestic policy.
And you have to ask that question.
Israel is destroying us from within.
And people are going to be able to do that.
I wanted to get a big broad smile on your face after this gloomy stuff we've been talking about.
Phil Giraldi, you're the best year friend, Gerald Salenti.
I'm on his show every Wednesday.
And every Wednesday he says to me, who do you have on?
And every Wednesday, after going through the list, and I go, the great Phil Giraldi, and he roars his approval, as only Salenti can do.
But thank you, great Uncle Phil.
It's always a pleasure, and we'll look forward to seeing you.
And I missed you last week.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Yeah, look forward to it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Coming up later today at 5:30 this afternoon, what is Israel's next move?
Who else?
▲
Export Selection