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Feb. 3, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:04
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump Runs OPEC
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Controlling Foreign Oil Revenue 00:15:00
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
what if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now hi everyone Geandra Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026.
Colonel Karen Kwatkowski will be with us in just a moment.
Does Donald Trump control OPEC?
She'll explain.
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Colonel Kwatkowski, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for joining us.
What country is the world's largest producer of oil?
I think the U.S. is at the top of that now, and we weren't before.
But when you look at, you know, I wanted to ask the question about OPEC, you know, because when I was younger, when I was in the military, you know, OPEC was not necessarily a friendly organization.
You know, we were always, and why did OPEC form?
I mean, they formed to protect the oil price for some of these countries that that's what they produced, and they didn't produce a lot of other things.
So always it was the enemies.
And if you look at over time, the past 30 years, 20 years, we have blown up OPEC members, destroyed their countries, decimated their ability to really develop their oil infrastructure.
Venezuela is just one example of that.
Certainly in Iraq, we did the same thing.
We have possessed their oil revenue in Iraq, in Libya, to some extent.
I mean, we blew up Libya almost entirely.
Venezuela, we have the U.S. Treasury controls a deposit in Qatar where all of the Venezuelan oil money will go.
I mean, you know, I guess the president can tap into that.
But we have become what we hated about OPEC.
And so it used to be, and in this article that you talk about, the article that is out this week, you know, I look at the Carter doctrine because when I was in the military back in the day, you know, the Carter doctrine was something that all subsequent presidents participated in.
It guided our Middle Eastern policy.
We were going to make sure that the oil flowed freely so that there weren't spikes in oil prices or any type of embargoes against the Western consumer, you know, high prices in oil.
We didn't want that.
And we did a foreign policy.
We did years and years of that.
And now it turns out we're the guy that controls the oil.
And we actually don't want cheap oil.
We want expensive oil.
Well, that was my next question, notwithstanding what he claims publicly.
Does Donald Trump want the price of oil to go up or to go down?
Yeah, I mean, I think he wants it to go up.
I mean, he is invested in this, politically invested, and also through his friends, his oligarch, the American oligarchs that surround Trump, you know, they benefit from higher oil prices.
In fact, I don't know if Trump knew what he was doing when he said, we've got to take Venezuela and we've got to control their oil.
I don't think he knew what he was doing.
It's quite expensive to get that oil out.
You can only build, extract, upgrade Venezuelan oil capacity through high oil prices, right?
It can't be done on low oil, which is why it hasn't been done.
We say, oh, they're socialists, they're Marxists.
They stole all the profits and didn't invest.
No, no.
Venezuelan oil is very expensive to get out of the ground and it's very expensive to process.
So you need high oil prices to support that capitalization, that development.
And yeah, so I mean, I don't know what Trump actually thinks, but I'm just saying he walks, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.
I never thought I'd hear an American president say this.
Now, I'm not, wasn't then, and I'm not now a fan of Jimmy Carter, but this is beautiful.
And I'm quoting your quoting, Carter, and your column.
I'm determined that the United States will remain the strongest of all nations, but our power will never be used to initiate a threat to the security of any nation or to the rights of any human being.
We seek to be and to remain secure, a nation at peace in a stable world.
But to be secure, we must face the world as it is.
Did he mean that?
Well, I think Carter did mean that.
I mean, he stood for a lot of things.
And, you know, we don't really study Jimmy Carter as president because as conservatives, we wrote him off pretty quickly.
And the Democrats did too, because he was not charismatic.
You know, he was an outsider like Trump.
You know, he came from kind of an apolitical background and he had, and he loves the country and he wanted to make the country better.
But, you know, the Democrats aren't particularly proud of him because, of course, it was Carter that led to the really shocking election and shocking popular election of Ronald Reagan.
And, you know, you think about Reagan, he's, you know, an actor, a former Democrat.
You know, this was the beginning of the, you know, the silent majority, the whole movement that later led to the Reform Party and to the rise of the Tea Party, certainly lending itself to Ron Paul and the libertarian movement.
So, yeah, I don't think the Democrats are very proud of Jimmy Carter.
But yeah, he believed what he was saying.
And of course he did.
And of course, Jimmy Carter, for all his peace-loving reputation, he engaged us with Bin Laden and the Taliban fighting the Russians in Afghanistan.
I mean, that was right, right?
Because the belief was that if the Soviet Union expanded into Afghanistan, they might challenge American hegemony in the Middle East.
And I guess he wasn't as beholden to the Israelis as his successors have been, but he did have some internal obligation to comply with them.
How is it that it complied with their wishes?
How is it that the United States owns the proceeds of sales of oil from Iraq?
Yeah, well, this is probably the greatest accomplishment of George W. Bush, Bush 43.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we never fight a war for oil, right?
That's everybody says, oh, we don't fight wars for oil.
But, you know, Saddam in the previous, Saddam Hussein in the previous year before we went in in 2003, he had decided to not sell his oil in dollars.
He would sell in the currencies that the recipients, the buyers used.
And he was flexible in doing that.
And that's what he did.
He first he announced he was going to do it and then he did it.
And it wasn't four or five months after he actually implemented that in December, I think early December, late November of 2002.
And of course, you know, we go in and it's a finally we get to Baghdad.
We have control.
First, it was the very first executive order that W signed once we planted our flag, you know, in the green zone or whatever of Baghdad.
So, you know, we love our government runs on fiat currency.
And even 30 years ago, even 20 years ago, we were printing a lot of money and we were our production, our real productivity as a nation was already declining.
So what are you going to do?
You've got to force, you either have to terrorize people into using your dollar or you force them to by owning or controlling the resource that the dollar is denominated against.
And we did that with oil and any gas that we get out of this situation in the Middle East too.
Same thing.
But yeah, he did that.
And so, you know, W is not a particularly smart guy, right?
I mean, I don't think anybody had any illusions about how brilliant he was, but the people around him and the Treasury Secretary of the time, I don't know who it was, but the people who advise, the people who make our policy through this president and this next president and the one after that, the policy doesn't change very much.
And those people understand very well what they're up against.
This is something that we should talk about in this country.
You know, what's happening to our money?
And why are we in wars constantly?
And why have we become OPEC?
Effectively an organization we hated.
And now we are not just like them, we're bigger than them and we're meaner than them.
I mean, look at how Trump wields the idea of threat and embargo.
I mean, it's not a week goes by.
He doesn't use those terms.
What is deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?
Do we even know?
Yeah.
Well, supposedly they've got for Iraq, they have the Iraq Development Fund, which was set up by a bunch of Goldman Sachs type people.
And, you know, in the Reserve Bank of New York, I guess is where the accounts are held.
And so supposedly there's an accounting trick.
I would call it an accounting trick, but whatever.
Supposedly the resources that Iraq sells in terms of oil and actually other resources, it's not just oil, commodities, goes into this Iraq redevelopment or Iraq development fund.
And then somebody's controlling that.
And I'm sure somebody's getting paid 10% a year to manage it.
I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, if it was being done to us by another country, my goodness, Americans would freak out.
But apparently we think it's okay to do it to other countries like that.
Can the president of the United States draw down not for his personal use, but for federal government use funds from that account?
Well, I think I don't know legally what he has to do, but it's like a lot of things.
If you can say that this is somehow part of the mission of the Iraq Development Fund, then you can use it for that.
So say he's got a company that's going to come do something in Iraq.
Sure.
It can be used for that legitimately.
We make the rules.
See, I don't think the Iraqis are making the rules as to how we define and utilize and distribute that money.
We make the rules.
This is why Trump likes it.
And if somebody sues Iraq in federal court in the United States and wins an enormous judgment against them, they cannot attach that judgment to this Iraq development fund.
At least those are the terms under which it was set up.
It would take a federal judge to bust those terms.
That's exactly right.
And when you read the congressional record, when that particular executive order that W signed, taking this oil, putting it in this fund, controlling it by the Wall Street types, they specifically explained to Congress just what you said.
You can't sue, you can't attach, you can't claim, it's all ours.
But I think this is actually why Trump or Trump's advisors, in the case of Venezuela, they didn't set it up in New York in the Reserve Bank.
They set it up in an account, a Treasury account, U.S. Treasury account, in Qatar.
And I think they did that on purpose because, of course, Trump doesn't go through Congress.
He doesn't have to tell Congress things.
But I think to protect any money that they are able to extract from Venezuela's oil production or other commodity production, having it in Qatar, I think is a way to kind of not just keep it away from prying eyes, but away from legal accountability as well.
So again, these guys are all crooks.
The president is a crook.
The people around him are crooks.
I mean, this is how crooks operate.
You know, if we open your eyes and see it.
How much gold is in Fort Knox?
Oh, my goodness.
I don't know.
I don't know.
How many?
Well, has it ever been audited?
Years and years ago, it was before, long before we went off the gold standard.
So it was, I think, maybe after World War II.
I'm not exactly sure.
But, you know, the weird thing between Fort, you know, with Epstein, remember, Trump talked a lot about Epstein when he was running.
Then he got elected.
Suddenly, Epstein, as an issue, evaporated.
Now, you know, thanks to Thomas Massey and others, it hasn't gone away and it's a real issue.
Fort Knox Audit Questioned 00:03:10
But he also, Trump also, when he campaigned, talked about an audit at Fort Knox to find out what exactly we have.
And of course, not all of it's ours.
You know, theoretically, we're holding gold from Germany, from England, from other countries, you know.
So what's there?
He talked a lot about it.
And it was very, the MAGA was responsive to this.
They liked to hear that.
As soon as he got elected, we didn't hear a word about it.
I think Rand Paul might have mentioned it.
And now Rand Paul, of course, Trump hates anybody who reminds him of his promises.
I don't know how much gold is there.
I don't think Trump knows, but I think somebody told Trump he doesn't want to know because otherwise, come on, we've got all these government workers doing stupid things.
Why not have them audit?
He'd have to explain how it got there and who owns it.
Why hasn't the Federal Reserve been audited?
Yeah, well, it was designed not to be part of the public's interest.
The Federal Reserve, if you and people who study this, of course, are quite familiar with it.
But when it was started in 1912 and the idea had bounced around for a while, this was a banker's bank.
It was a banker's bank.
And the bankers who needed a bank were the same bankers that were bankrolling our government.
So it's basically like, well, how do we make sure none of us, you know, we want to go take risks and make, you know, we want to play it fast and loose, but how do we make sure we're not too big to fail?
How do we make sure we're bailed out?
Well, that's what the Federal Reserve is created to do, to bail out government and to bail out the friends of government.
How does it do this?
Well, it bypasses the democracy.
It bypasses the republic and it simply makes money available, whether that's to print it, to borrow it, to sell bonds.
If you can't find buyers, you buy the bonds yourself.
I mean, think about that.
Think about that.
Like, that's not how normal people, individuals or companies can operate.
But anyway, if you look at the Federal Reserve, you would want it to be audited.
You would go, oh my God, this is so crazy.
but it was designed not to be looked at so the larger print it prints fake money Yes, yes.
And when you put it that way, which is the truth, which is absolutely the truth.
And it has also been responsible for devaluing our money from the very beginning.
But I think for people living today, I think the last 20, 30 years, you've really seen a collapse in the purchasing power of our dollar.
Well, that's all on the Federal Reserve.
But it does that to enrich its friends, of course, but it does it to help government spend money that we don't have because that's how you buy votes.
That's how you, oh, look how great it is.
We're doing this.
We're doing that.
And our grandkids and our children and our futures are all being flushed down the toilet because of the desire of politicians to have a smile on their face and to get reelected because we're spending this money and that money.
And look how easy it is.
Why Iran Deserves Transparency 00:04:23
Oh, look at the bright, shiny buildings.
Well, it's a mirage.
It is a just shadow.
It's a house of mirrors.
It's very shiny.
And oh my goodness, how exciting it is.
But in fact, it violates the laws of all fundamental economics.
And it leads to not just very terrible busts, you know, boom and bust cycle.
It leads to monetary and fiscal collapses.
And that's what's coming.
And again, gold, why are people interested in some minerals or some metal, yellow metal?
I mean, what can you buy with it?
Well, it's a hedge against the collapse of the fiat currency that is being produced with abandoned by our country, by the Treasury, by the Federal Reserve.
So it's a complicated thing.
It's hard to explain.
But yeah, Americans should be looking at it.
Congress should be looking at it.
And Trump wants to command it.
He doesn't want to look at it.
He figures he understands everything he needs to know.
He wants to command it.
And we should all be a little concerned about that because Trump's track record as an investor, as a businessman, it's not exceptionally good.
It doesn't translate really well into uh being the president, with the military which he can float around the ocean and uh start fights with people, fights that he won't be.
You know, Trump also does not understand.
I don't think right, right.
What will Trump tell?
How lack we're not very capable these days to do things.
He's just nuts.
What will Trump tell the American public is the threat that Iran poses to American national security or to the lives of the average middle-class American?
Well, he'll ask Benjamin Netanyahu what the problem is and Netanyahu will say, oh um, Hamas is going to attack Americans in our cities and Iran is supporting Hamas.
So they'll make some connection.
It's all insanity.
Um it's, it's entire.
It's just absolutely insane.
I, you know it looks like there's a lull.
Uh maybe, a maybe it's on purpose that then we're not going to have a big war in the Middle East, because supposedly Iran is talking to to Trump's people.
But you know, Trump's vision and intention for Iran comes right out of uh, you know, West Jerusalem.
It comes right out of Tel Aviv.
It is the Israeli position, which is, nobody can have anything and they must be subordinate to us and we can have everything.
So I would hope that in these negotiations, if they're real and if they lead to anything, that they lead to um, some participation and some transparency of Israel with their nuclear weapons, with their nuclear um development and their uh their uh uh, you know processing of uranium and their sale and trade of nuclear weapons and precursor materials around the world.
Why don't we see some transparency in that?
Because that is something that I think if that was on the table which it isn't, but if it was then you could really say hey maybe, maybe Trump can be the kind of peacemaker he is in his own mind and he can make a change.
But why would any country, why would any country trust the United States number one?
And in the Middle East, when you have Israel there, which refuses to acknowledge their nuclear capability, refuses to participate in the end, the national, the Non-criminal proliferation treaty or any type of inspections and transparency?
They refuse all of that.
They fight everybody all the time.
They lie constantly about why they're fighting their neighbors.
But if you don't deal with that problem, why does anyone?
Why does Trump think that oh, I can tell Iran that it's not even good enough that you can't develop uranium to a certain level or or at all, but now you can't even have ballistic missiles to Deliver conventional payloads, because that would scare Israel.
It's like nobody in their right mind would think that that makes any kind of sense at all.
And it doesn't.
Why They Fight Constantly 00:00:27
Right, right.
Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend.
No matter what we're talking about, the world is a mess.
And you have a very, very unique handle on it.
Much appreciated by me and by our audience.
Thank you for joining us.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Judge.
We look forward to seeing you again next week.
We keep pumping out those great columns, which we're happy to put on JudgeNap.
All the best, Karen.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
And coming up, the end of this long day at four o'clock, who else?
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