March 20, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:54
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern - Week of 20-March
Judge Andrew Napolitano hosts Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern to dissect the March 20, 2026 intelligence roundtable, focusing on preemptive war against Iran, Joe Kent's resignation over U.S. funding of Sunni extremists, and Tulsi Gabbard's alleged perjury regarding Iran's 2003 nuclear program cessation. The guests condemn Israel's destruction of a Persian Gulf gas field and criticize the administration for covering up casualties and lies about Saudi oil prices, ultimately arguing that Netanyahu's grip on President Trump mirrors Ariel Sharon's influence over George W. Bush, revealing a dangerous pattern of deception driving current conflicts. [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 Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, March 20th, 2026.
It's the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite segment in which we try and get our arms around the events of the preceding week, the intelligence community roundtable with my dear friends and longtime colleagues Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Before we get to Joe Kent's resignation and Tulsi Gabbard's capitulation and the Israeli destruction of a natural, a significant natural gas field, Larry, is it your view that Trump and Netanyahu are looking for an off-ramp?
I think so, or at least I base that, and it may be a stretch, but yesterday Netanyahu made a curious comment, sounding like Donald Trump, in which he said basically that they, you know, they had destroyed the missile force, that Iran no longer had a ballistic missile force, and that they had destroyed their ability to get a nuclear weapon.
Now, both of those are false, but the fact that he was out making that claim is telling me, okay, if you sell that to the public, then the next step is, therefore, we can call a halt to this.
We've accomplished our mission.
Let's go.
The other thing that makes me think that that is one, that they may be looking for an exit ramp, is what Aleister Crook and his wife Aslin, in monitoring the Hebrew press, said that they had noticed there's been a definite shift in tone that it looks like Israel's trying to figure out how do we get out of this mess because they've gotten into a tit for tat that they're not going to be able to sustain.
Wow.
Ray, how do you look at this?
Well, the key is, of course, whether Iran will cease and desist.
And I see no evidence of that at all.
They're in this for the long term.
And I agree that there are little snippets out there suggesting that by and by the U.S. and Israel will realize that this is a no-win situation for them.
But I see no evidence really that the Iranians are going to abide by this.
And I think that those mutual strikes on the gas fields, my God, I mean, those are irreversible things.
The economy is going down, the world economy.
And these are things that I think more typical of what we can expect during the next few weeks than any feelers for a real ceasefire.
Larry, do you think that the Israelis attacked those gas fields on their own and without the knowledge or consent of the U.S.?
No, absolutely not.
There's no way they could.
The United States has, it used to be located at Al-Udid, something called the Combined Air Operations Center, the CAOC.
The CAOC monitors every single aircraft that takes off lands that's in the air to deconflict what's you know prevent Israeli and U.S. forces from flying into each other or shooting at one another.
But they absolutely knew this was not a shock to Trump.
U.S. military commanders knew it was happening.
Well, let's move to Joe Kent's resignation.
Ray, how do you read this?
How significant is this?
How profound was his statement?
How significant was the resignation of the chief of counterterrorism for the reasons he gave?
Well, clearly, he thought about this and decided to let it all hang out to include accusing Israel of being responsible for all this thing and the people that push Israel's case here in the United States.
I was amazed.
It was succinct.
It was good.
And his interview with Tucker Colson persuades me that he's the real deal.
He's seen the light.
And what bothers me most, actually, was this allusion to these sinister forces that not even he fully understands.
I mean, he's not one of these deep state guys.
I mean, he's a guy who has fought.
He's a soldier, okay?
And he's pumped up into this big job and he realizes, oh my God, there's something that I don't understand, but it's having a major effect on what's going on.
That disturbed me greatly.
I'm just going to jump back to the oil fields for a second, Larry.
So hold your thoughts on what Ray just said.
Chris reminded me that we have a clip of Netanyahu saying Israel acted alone, which is directly contrary to what you said, but I want you to comment on it.
Chris, number one, please.
Israel acted alone against the Isla gas compound.
Fact number two, President Trump asks us to hold off on future attacks, and we're holding out.
As far as oil prices are rising, spikes, you know what a spike is?
You know what a spike is?
It goes up and goes down.
The Americans are working very hard, and we're trying to help them in every way that we can to open the straits of Hormuz.
And if they succeed, which I think they will, then oil prices will come down.
Truth, Larry?
Nothing truthful comes out of that man's mouth.
No, I can't say how I know that the U.S. knew, but we knew.
And, you know, he's just, he's lying, particularly about what's happening with the price of oil.
You know, nobody in the media has pointed out the fact that four days before they launched this war of aggression on Iran on February 24th, Donald Trump was giving the State of the Union address and made and touted, man, hey, in some places in the country, gas is down to a buck 99.
Well, since then, gasoline is up, you know, in the last three weeks in my neighborhood, up over a dollar a gallon now.
Diesel is up well over $2 a gallon.
And the price seems to jump about 10 cents every other day.
So this is not sustainable.
And the idea that, oh, it's a spike, it goes up and it goes down.
No, this is a long-term damage that's been done.
And it is not going to get turned around anytime soon.
Let's get back to Joe Kent now.
You were, I think I read you correctly, not that pleased. with his interview with Tucker Carlson, Larry.
Well, it was, you know, his emphasis upon Iran being, you know, the proxies of Iran carrying out terrorism.
That's just, you know, it's just not true.
And, you know, I think, but I, but part of us explained, you know, he was, he's been raised in this environment within the military that Iran was seen as this great enemy.
Joe, you know, he joined, he was an army ranger at the age of 17 and he didn't go to college, didn't have any chance to really get an education.
And what I've, you know, what I saw a lot of times in my work with the special operations forces, and his unit was considered, the 75th Rangers were considered part of the special operations world.
They didn't really understand the difference between Sunni and Shia, at least in the early days of right after 9-11.
So this, I wish that he would have also pointed out that this claim that Iran's the number one sponsor of terrorism is just specious.
It's not true.
How about the, Larry, before I elicit Ray's views on this, the soundness of the reasons for his resignation?
Oh, no, yeah, no, listen.
He was 100% is right.
I agreed with everything Ray said about it.
It's 100% integrity on his part because, you know, he is specifically pointing out that we were in Syria.
The civil war that started in Syria was started by us.
And part of it included us funding the very Islamic extremists, the Sunni radicals that were implicated in attacking us in 9-11.
And yet here we are funding them, stirring up a war in Syria, because, as he correctly noted, it was on behalf of Israel.
There was no U.S. strategic national interest at stake there, nothing whatsoever.
And his wife got killed for it, even though in that first term, Trump was trying to pull the U.S. troops out.
And there were members of the Pentagon and in central command that refused to follow orders.
Wow.
Ray, the White House, in its trashing of Joe Kent claims that at the time of his resignation, he did not have a national security clearance to view classified documents.
Isn't that inconceivable that the head of counterterrorism would not have that kind of a clearance?
I'm reminded of the movie Princess Bride.
Inconceivable.
Yeah.
That's the exact right adjective.
Let me say a word about Israel's hold on U.S. presidents.
Now, I've been around a while.
And with Iraq, we had General Scowcroft, who was head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under George W. Bush, saying after the invasion of Iraq, that Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu's predecessor, had Bush wrapped around his little finger.
He had him mesmerized.
Was this a rumor?
No.
Scowcroft, out of character, went to the Financial Times and said, You ought to know this.
This is what's gone down here.
Now, we have the same position here.
Now, I think that what Max Blumenthal said yesterday, we supply all the wherewithal and enable all this stuff.
But let's assume that Netanyahu did not ask for permission, but rather, as the Israelis all want to do, ask for forgiveness afterwards.
You saw him there.
The U.S. has asked us not to do that anymore.
So, we won't do it anymore.
Well, there's a chance, it seems to me, that since not only Ariel Sharon, but Netanyahu has this president wrapped around his little finger, they went off.
There's a chance he went off and did this himself with U.S. weaponry and everything, and now is in effect saying, Well, okay, we're not going to do that anymore until the next time.
In other words, he has a hold on Trump, even stronger and tighter than the one Ariel Sharon had on Bush.
And that is the story, in my view.
Back to Joe Kent, Larry.
Do you think he's the tip of the iceberg?
Do you think he speaks for others who maybe lack his personal courage or lack the financial ability to leave their jobs?
I would hope so.
Civil Disobedience at Sea00:04:48
But, you know, this is what's so disturbing.
Not a single officer in either the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force has resigned in protest over a war of aggression, which, as you know, was the principal charge brought against the Nazis at the Nuremberg trial.
The United States has embarked on the same kind of action that Adolf Hitler authorized and used back in 1939, and nobody's saying a word about it.
And we've gaslit ourselves to the point of believing all sorts of nonsense with respect to Iran.
And we're just, we're regularly murdering people.
We're taking life with no regard for those who suffer on the receiving end of our violence.
And, you know, I'm sickened by it because this, you know, the United States, we like to, you know, we get all misty-eyed when Lee Greenwood sings, I'm proud to be an American.
Right.
Well, I am no longer proud to be an American.
I am ashamed to be an American with what I see us doing because particularly with the Air Force killing children and people, they get to drop bombs.
They don't have to see the consequences of their murdering and the mangled bodies and the burning flesh.
It's a video game.
It's standoff.
And yet we're changing the lives of people forever and without any consideration for what it implies because we claim that we're fighting against some sort of tyranny.
When we are engaged, we are the very source of that tyranny right now.
I'd like to add to that, if I may.
Of course.
The four stars and the people who bubble up to the top are forget about them.
They have no spine anymore.
They've been trained to just salute, say yes, sir.
But who's stuffing the toilets on aircraft carriers?
Who is burning up the laundry room on aircraft?
The enlisted guys.
Why is one of our aircraft carriers got to go back to Crete to make sure that they can Put out the fire in the laundry room.
I see this as the kind of civil disobedience that sailors who know what the hell is going on and have little or no respect to the guys with the four stars.
I think there's some hope in that.
And the more we can put out our message and let them see that they're being conned once again, they're putting their lives at risk for Israel, which is exactly what Joe Dent and others are now able to say, the more they'll resist.
And, you know, if you can't resist an illegal order, well, at least you can plug up the toilet.
Yeah.
Harry, tell me if you've ever heard of this.
Dennis Fritz told us, and I remember this from my own experience: when you salute an officer, you often say something: Good morning, sir.
Good afternoon, sir.
Many of the troops, when they salute, are saying, You ready for this?
Epstein.
Really?
Yeah.
These young kids know what's going on.
Yeah, they can't help but know what's going on.
Look, that aircraft carrier with a 30-hour fire, Andrei Martianov put out in a recent video he did two days ago.
He discussed another fire.
And I forget the exact date.
It wasn't recent.
It was, you know, say 25, 30 years ago.
But actually, it may have been, it was an aircraft carrier that had actually, one of our carriers, it had been hit with a missile, and it took them 19 hours to put out the fire.
Now, his point was: if we had this ship that was actually being shot at, and it took them 19 hours to put out a fire, there's something wrong here because it shouldn't take you 30 hours to put out a bunch of, you know, burning lint.
So, you know, the lying that's going on by the administration about different events that have happened, such as, you know, they claimed that the five KC-135 fuel tankers that were on the ground in Saudi Arabia, that only one of them was damaged.
Imminent Threat Malpractice00:09:48
The others just had slight damage.
That's not true.
All five were basically destroyed.
So the administration's, they've sent out the word that they don't want families with the deceased whose sons or daughters have died in this war.
They don't want them to have publicity at their funerals.
So, I mean, they're covering up casualties and trying to pretend that everything's just hunky-dory, and it's not.
Here's the Tulsi Gabbard capitulation, a slightly edited version.
The interrogator who did a terrific job, I don't know if he's a lawyer and has done this before, but he's excellent here, is Senator John Osoff of Georgia.
Chris cut number 21.
Quote, Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated, end quote, correct?
That's right.
And is that in fact the assessment of the intelligence community?
Yes.
So the assessment of the intelligence community is that Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated by last summer's airstrikes.
Yes.
Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
The intelligence community assessed that Iran maintained the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow their nuclear enrichment capabilities.
Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was a, quote, imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime, yes or no?
Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.
False.
This is the worldwide threats hearing where you present to Congress national intelligence, timely, objective, and independent of political considerations.
Was it the intelligence community's assessment that, nevertheless, despite this obliteration, there was a quote imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?
Yes or no?
It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.
It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.
This is the worldwide threats hearing.
Ray, who's right, Director Gabbard or Senator Osoff?
Well, also has that responsibility.
He made it quite clear.
It really does not require a lot of commentary.
I would point out that in 1964, I contributed to the 1964 annual threat briefing.
We gave it, we gave it to LBJ through who was it?
Clark Clifford was one of the things in those days.
Now, you told the truth of those things, okay?
And you let it all hang out.
Now we have a situation where not only did she duck the question and disclaim any responsibility for the word imminent, which is a tragedy.
She should be can, but also she forgot to read one paragraph in her oral testimony, her lead in speech that contradicts what Trump and everybody else has been saying.
I will read that paragraph.
Iran's nuclear program has been obliterated by U.S. airstrikes last June.
And get this, the regime has made, quote, no efforts, end quote, since then to quote try to rebuild that enrichment capability.
Oh, wow.
So it was obliterated.
And even on enrichment, they've made no efforts.
But the big deal is the nuclear weapon, which is separate and distinct from the enrichment.
Okay.
Now, ever since 2007, the intelligence community bravely has said Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and has not resumed work.
There's a fatwa against it until now.
Last year, Tulsi Gabbard said it.
What'd she say now?
There's one sentence on this in the annual threat briefing, and it says, We are monitoring Iranian weapons of mass destruction capabilities and actions following the initiation of Operation Epic Fury.
She says zero on the real problem, and that is whether they're pursuing a nuclear weapon.
And they haven't been.
They killed the guy who forbade it.
You know, this new guy, we don't know what he's going to do.
But my God, if they can't tell the truth, you know, this is the last thing that I was proud of that NIE in 2007, they stuck to it until just two days ago.
Larry, she took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Her testimony is so bad, it's practically, and maybe it is, perjury.
Yeah, it is.
You know, several of us, at least I'm speaking for myself, I had high hopes that Tulsi would bring some integrity to the intelligence process based upon her previous statements.
She was always quite outspoken against the war in Iraq.
But, you know, she disgraced herself, completely, utterly disgraced herself.
You know, I was talking earlier this week with Danny Davis, and Danny had been selected by Tulsi to be one of her deputies and the director of national intelligence.
And, you know, we were both commenting that we hoped that when we heard about what Joe Kent did, that Tulsi would be following him out the door.
But boy, not only has she doubled down on deceit, I mean, she's fully embraced it.
And it is the notion that the director of national intelligence is not the one who's supposed to alert the president to an imminent threat is beyond malpractice.
It's contrary to law.
The statute says that that's her job, doesn't it, Ray?
Well, you know, imminent threat.
Who gets to define imminent threat?
People could argue that's a political decision, but intelligence people worth their salt say the thing for God's sake.
This is an imminent threat.
And the reason they didn't say it, because there was no imminent threat.
The timing is interesting.
Joe Kent quits publicly right before she testifies.
In other words, he probably made it a Herculean effort to say, look, Tulsi, this is really bad.
Let's get out while getting out is good.
And she said, no, I'm going to play the game.
Maybe I can make more influence if I stay in.
He said, I'm out of here.
And this is what I'm going to say to Trump tomorrow.
Okay.
That's interesting because if Joe, if Joe Kent, I keep thinking Clark Kent.
No, no, it was Joe Kent.
If he's willing to do this and warn Tulsi, which I'm sure he did, look, I'm out of here because I can't tolerate the dishonesty.
And she went ahead anyway.
So Larry is quite right.
This is shameful, whether it's perjury or not.
That would be up to you, Judge.
Last topic.
Max Blumenthal reported to us last night that the IDF has threatened Russian leaders who wish Israel ill.
Are these people out of their minds, Larry?
Well, yeah, they're fanatics.
I mean, these are not rational people who have some sort of belief in law and then understand that there are things that people should do and things that people should never do that are against the law.
They are a law unto themselves.
And that's, I think, one of the reasons they get along so well with Donald Trump, as he himself has declared there basically he doesn't respect any kind of international law and candidly doesn't respect any kind of law within the United States, including the Constitution.
For him, it's feelings.
If he feels it, if it feels good, he's going to do it.
You know, my old boss at the State Department, a retired Marine Colonel, he used to say, if it feels really good, it's probably wrong.
Ray, I'll give you the last word, my friend.
Well, I too watched Max last night.
What a gift he is, huh?
Yes, he is.
Including encouraging people who know that the lies are being spread far and wide, know that young people are being killed, not only U.S. people, but calling for people to step up and say, look, we know that this was no imminent threat.
Now, the other thing that Max said was that Trump is deathly afraid of being assassinated.
I believe that to be true.
I believe that these deep forces that Joe Kent referred to several times toward the end with Tucker, I think that Trump has been given to believe that there are these forces, they're out to get you, and that the IDF is one of those deep forces.
Trump's Fear of Assassination00:01:02
So you better play ball.
And there's another sort of wrapped around his little finger.
Netanyahu has our president wrapped around his little finger, just like Ariel Sharon had Bush and Cheney.
And that's the main story here.
And the wonder is that Joe Kent had the guts to say so explicitly.
That's good news.
Gentlemen, thank you for another great segment.
Deeply appreciated.
We'll look forward to seeing you both at your usual times on Monday morning.
If hell breaks loose over the weekend, I hope it doesn't happen, but if it does, we'll find you.
Thank you, guys.
All the best.
Thanks, Judge.
Sure.
And on Monday, our usual repertoire of Alastair Crook at eight in the morning, Larry Johnson at nine, Ray McGovern at 10, and one or two of our other major players in the afternoon.
Ritter's in Russia, but we'll find him.
Thank you for watching.
Have a nice weekend, Judge Napolitano, for judging Freedom.