Feb. 10, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:48
Gilbert Doctorow : Does the Kremlin Trust Washington?
Gilbert Doctorow examines Kremlin skepticism toward Washington, highlighting Iran tensions where Tehran rejected U.S. demands and fuel prices could surge to $10/gallon if Hormuz closes. Epstein’s alleged crimes—$100M settlements, minors on boats—raise questions about his geopolitical influence. Ukraine’s mid-May elections under war conditions are dismissed as propaganda; Zelensky’s peace talks face U.S.-Russian rejection. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s February BRICS speech criticized Trump’s sanctions stance, revealing frustration over exclusion from negotiations, possibly sidelined by Putin’s inner circle like Kiril Dmitriev and Ushakov. The episode underscores deep distrust in U.S.-Russia relations amid shifting power dynamics and unconfirmed threats. [Automatically generated summary]
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.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Adjudging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, February 11th, 2026.
Gilbert Doctorow will join us in just a moment on Does the Kremlin Trust Washington?
You'll be surprised at what Foreign Minister Lavrov had to say about that.
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Gilbert Doctorow, good day to you, my friend, and welcome here.
Before we get to the Kremlin's views, public and private, on Washington, what is your take on the United States and Iran negotiations?
I mean, Tehran has already rejected the sovereignty-destroying demands that Secretary Rubio made.
So what is there to negotiate?
Well, essentially, the question we're dealing with in another form is: will the United States attack Iran?
Since, as As you just said, Tehran has rejected at least two of the three conditions that Rubio made in his public statements as being definitive for the nature of the talks.
These issues are highly divisive in the expert community, including among some of your most frequent visitors from background in the CIA in the past several days.
You have one side saying that there's no way that the United States could think of attacking Iran, given the position of the Pentagon, warning how this could get out of hand at once and lead to a big conflagration, enormous loss of American servicemen's lives as they come under attack from Iran, and the danger to the fleet of the Chinese and Russian vessels in the neighborhood who are there precisely to prevent an attack on Iran.
So that's one side of the story.
The other side of the story, I heard from your other very responsible guest, Larry Johnson, is today, who was saying that his contacts will say there's going to be an attack.
I can tell you right now, the Russians themselves are divided on this.
The talk shows last night were 100% behind the notion that the United States will attack Iran.
So that, of course, is not, as talk shows, that's not official Muslim.
But the issues are, it's impossible to call this one.
Are the United States and Iran, as far as you know, still speaking?
We know that Prime Minister Netanyahu is in Washington.
We know that whatever he's going to tell President Trump, he's already told Witcoff and Kushner and they've told President Trump.
We know that he apparently has changed his mind, or we believe he has, and now wants the war to start as recently as a month ago on January 14th, that time period, he did not want the bombing to occur.
So what's changed?
Well, what has changed, among other things, is Donald Trump himself, I think, was pointed out on your show or otherwise is in public discussion that Trump was not allowing Netanyahu to address Congress, that this visit is quite private, that he's not there as he would have been next week for meeting with the donors to Israel.
And that suggests that Trump does not have good news for Netanyahu.
Good news meaning that he would be going along with Netanyahu's request for an attack on Iran.
So there is reason for supposing that nothing is going to happen.
Is there angst in Europe over the specter of a regional war in the Middle East commenced by Israel and the United States in order to further the greater Israeli domination project?
We're putting aside the moral side, the moral issues of Israel's expansion and at what price for the Palestinians and all other neighbors.
Here in Europe, there is, of course, the alarm sounded by economists and finance people on what the fallout of such a regional war would mean.
An enormous spike in the cost of petroleum, which has a direct impact on the cost of living and the viability of the European economies.
So the issue is not an abstract one, and it's not a moral one.
It's a very practical one if you do not want such a war.
I mean, what will happen to the average European trying to fill the tank of his automobile if the Straits of Hormuz are closed by the Iranians?
Nothing good.
Putin's Dilemma00:14:51
Right, right.
And the same thing here.
I mean, we've seen predictions as high as $10 a gallon for gasoline.
That would wreck the American economy in a month or so.
Yeah, well, here in Europe, the people got used to $5, $6 a gallon more.
And even as fuel prices came down sharply in the States, Europe has not experienced that benefit.
So nonetheless, the cost of everything goes up when fuel is in short supply and the prices are rising fast.
And the economy requires the supply, not just an abstract price put on the gallon, but the fuel has to be there.
And if the Hormuz Strait is closed, then it won't be here.
Yeah.
The Epstein files, which are resonating very loudly at number 10 Downing Street in London, are they resonating in Western Europe?
Oh, of course they are.
And there are a number of European countries that are alarmed as one or another prominent person is caught on the web.
I would just like to bring out one thing that no one is talking very much about.
And that is, we heard some time ago, we always were hearing that Mr. Epstein had a paedophile circle.
We don't hear that anymore.
It's going to come out.
What we hear is, oh, he was trading in sex with minors.
Okay, but these are not 12-year-old kids, huh?
17 is just on the edge of 18.
That is a wholly different type of criminality from being a pedophile from selling paedophiles, nor is there any discussion of the murders.
I just recall very, very well that when there was so much talk about Clinton going to these parties and others, the parties were of the most nightmarish variety.
These were parties on boats where kids were raped and then thrown over to drown.
I don't hear about that yet.
It's going to come out because these were not just strange talk or gossip of the 1990s and early noughties.
It was going on and it's going to come out.
I had not heard until just now of children being raped on boats and then thrown overboard.
Is there evidence for that with which you're familiar?
Oh, this is something I'm bringing up from my recollection of 20 years ago.
This is not something that has yet been divulged by anyone going through those files.
But there is reason to believe that those particular files, including having sex with corpses, which is possibly what Prince Andrew was doing in that photo that you see him hovering over a body.
We're going to move on.
There's a lot of real dirt, of unbelievable dirt in the Epstein files, which haven't yet been brought up.
Is it your understanding that there was another side to Epstein, that he was a sophisticated investor and geopolitical player?
He seems to have known people in almost all major Western governments.
Well, money is attracted to money.
And today's Financial Times speaks about his making a $100 million settlement to someone who had brought charges against him.
You have to have the $100 million to give up.
So there was enormous money here, and that would necessarily attract people who like to hover around money and power.
The Financial Times is also reporting this morning, along with other European media outlets.
I haven't seen it here in the U.S. yet.
In fact, it was you who alerted me to this, for which I am grateful, that President Zelensky is planning an election and a referendum on a peace agreement in Ukraine sometime in the next three months, hovering around the middle of May.
But how is this feasible?
Well, first of all, this coincides with what has been in public record for the last week or so.
The Russians were saying the same thing, that Trump was rushing them.
He was giving them great pressure to proceed and get this over with.
And the logic is, I mean, he is a political animal.
He wants this out of the way six months before the elections, the midterm elections.
So the date of May 15th has perfect logic to it.
I believe that this was what Zelensky heard and then repeated.
Now, how could they do it?
The Financial Times is raising all kinds of difficulties.
My goodness, how can you have elections when there's a war going on?
The Russians are going to be using drones against the balloting halls.
This is nonsense.
Why would they do that?
Or they have to figure out a way of bringing in all the Ukrainians who have left.
Do they have to?
Half the country has left.
I think, and if they left, most of them have left for good.
The country was 40 million.
It's now probably less than 20 million.
So what are you going to do about all those people?
They're not going to vote.
It's an absolute nonsense to make it so difficult that there can be no election.
No, they'll have to simplify and take it as it is.
And I think what the Russians will not be happy with the notion that Mr. Zelensky will be re-elected.
The Financial Times is holding that out as a possibility, even as a likelihood.
I don't see it.
They're saying that, oh, yes, his ratings have fallen.
Fallen?
To what?
2%?
The Financial Times report on this question of elections is utter rubbish.
There are just a few facts in it and a lot of imagination.
The Financial Times is in some instances very useful.
And in some other instances, they are pure propaganda.
This particular front page article is propaganda.
Inside, yesterday, there was more propaganda about how the Russians are experiencing at least twice as many casualties as the Ukrainians are and that have suffered, what do they say, five, six hundred thousand deaths.
While we know that Zelensky said he's had a total of 55,000 deaths.
Those numbers are ludicrous.
Of course, on both ends.
Yes.
That the Russians may have gone from 150,000, which was the last thing that all the military experts were saying among our colleagues, to 200,000 or even 300,000 is possible and it is terrible.
But we can imagine at least seven times as many Ukrainians have died simply because of the correlation between artillery shells and deaths.
And they're sure the drone warfare does not eliminate deaths from artillery and uh and missile strikes.
Missile strikes, uh on buildings underground and above ground where there are large, uh large groups of of foreign and Ukrainian officers and soldiers.
Wow, uh.
Getting back to this uh story about the proposed election, and uh and uh vote on a peace treaty, a plebiscite, whatever you want to call it, but what would they be voting on?
The Russians are not going to agree to anything even remotely palatable to the uh Ukrainians.
I I don't understand what the actual vote would be on, in addition to the election of a parliament or a president.
Well, here's the another side to the same article in the Financial Times and why it is totally propagandistic.
Uh, they are pretending that the, that the peace settlement that mr Zelensky will be proposing for the referendum and which would assure his simultaneous victory in in a presidential election uh, on the same day um would be his terms, which is nonsense.
That they that will not be agreed either with the United States or with Russia, and so that would just be a stunt, a political stunt in the guise of uh of making peace.
Well, if that's what he wants to go to the electorate with, I don't think the Russians would stop bombing uh they.
They will stop and desist if it looks like it's going to be a real election on real issues, which is not what mr Zelensky is saying.
I want to play for you um a comment from uh Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov uh two days ago on february 9th, when he was speaking at a Bricks uh conference.
He's rather uh critical of the Trump administration for failing to undo the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration.
This is a typical Lavrov.
It's so well thought uh and articulated.
I'd like you to listen to it.
And then I want to have a discussion with you about whether the Kremlin still trusts the White House.
Chris number two, president Putin, has repeatedly said, no, we are not refusing to use the dollar.
Under Biden, the?
U.s has done everything to turn the dollar into a weapon against those who are out of favor, and I would like to point out and emphasize that the?
The U.S. administration, notwithstanding the various public statements we have heard regarding the urgent necessity of bringing a conclusion to the war in Ukraine, that was originally unleashed during the Biden administration, we need to come to an agreement, remove it from the agenda, and then clear, bright prospects for mutually beneficial Russian-American investment and other cooperation will open up.
But all the laws that Biden passed to punish Russia after the start of the war.
the special military operation are not being challenged by the Trump administration.
For example, in april, the state of emergency law was extended, the core of which is the punishment of Russia, the imposition of sanctions against Russia, including the freezing of our gold and foreign currency reserves.
This is explicitly stated as being due to Russia's hostile behavior in foreign policies, and as examples interference in United States elections is cited the very thing president Trump categorically opposes on a daily basis and rejects all of it And violations of international law, human rights.
There's no end to the list.
This is all pure Bidenism, which Trump and his team reject outright.
But nevertheless, they calmly extended it.
Should the law of the sanctions against Russia continue to be in effect Xi's theory?
It's all pure Bidenism, which Trump publicly rejects but privately has extended.
A fair characterization of what President Putin and his inner circle think of Trump and his inner circle.
Yes and no.
Cook, there are numbers of ways to interpret this.
The Russians know how to play good cop, bad cop.
They know how to speak contradictory statements, partly for the purposes of letting out steam.
For years, until it became untenable during the start of the special military operation, Gazprom was paying the salaries of, I believe, Dozht, these seditious, or Echo Echo Moscow, the Echo of Moscow, television and stations, which were deeply seditious.
What was the logic for it?
To let off steam, to show that there is freedom of speech and so on.
So it is with these contradictions, but between, let me be specific, because you asked me as if he was speaking in line with Putin.
He isn't.
His direct criticism of the United States, which is even more harsh in some other recent interviews, where he make mention of the, well, here we are, we're getting along fine, and you have imposed these dreadful sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil.
That is pure Trump.
That has nothing to do with Biden.
So he has made very critical statements about the, which bear on the ability of the United States to enter into and keep agreements, all of which puts in question what?
Mr. Putin's policies.
Mr. Putin's policies are directly the opposite of that.
They are putting a lot of trust in the relationship with Donald Trump because only through the help of the United States can the opposition in Europe be manageable and repressed so that a genuine reorganization of European security becomes possible.
That is the vision of Putin.
He's made his bets on doing a deal with Trump.
And here you have his foreign minister saying the opposite.
So something is going on here.
I've personally given another interpretation that some of the bitterness in recent statements by Lavrov comes out of his powerlessness, his sense of humiliation,
that he is excluded from the peace talks and that everything of importance has been delegated by Putin to Kiril Dmitriev and to Ushakov, a former Russian subordinate to the minister.
Lavrov.
His capacity, Lavrov, in his capacity as ambassador to the United States.
So this is a humiliation at the end of his career.
And I think this could explain the odd position he has attacking his own president's foreign policy.
Thank You for Your Time00:00:35
Wow, fascinating stuff, Gilbert.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for letting me take you across the board in our conversations earlier today.
We appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you again next week.
Oh, thanks so much.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 10 this morning, Matt Ho at 1 this afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason at 2 this afternoon, Scott Ritter at 3 this afternoon, the great Phil Giraldi at 3.45 this afternoon,