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March 21, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:21
A Deal For Assange?

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that a deal was being discussed between Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's legal team and the US Department of Justice that might result in a plea to lesser charges. Good idea? Also today: New York is nuts - squatters have more rights than homeowners! Finally: Say it ain't so, Trump - new speculation about his top cabinet picks should terrify us.

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Assange Deal: Cautiously Optimistic 00:14:14
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing fine.
Good.
We had to skirt around a few wicked thunderstorms.
Yeah, there's a few political thunderstorms approaching.
And we're going to be watching those because there's going to be more and more of them.
But we want to start off with, you know, if you look at the headline and think about it, it's good news, but cautiously so.
It has to do with our friend Assange.
And because he has suffered enough, I think going through hell for five to ten years after all these years they've been after him.
Now they're, you know, at the recommendation of the Australian government, they should have been the only ones involved.
He's a citizen of Australia.
But anyway, we took over there and Australia does what we tell them.
Except they're sort of the ones that challenge the United States on how to treat Assange and talk about maybe letting him get out of prison without going to trial in the United States where he would be incarcerated probably for life.
So anyway, there's the Australians changed their minds and now the rumor out is, we hope it's true, DOGA mulling plea deal for Assange.
WikiLeaks founder could finally walk free.
Well, I imagine there is some negotiations going on and that's good.
And the idea of ever walking free is difficult, but he may have his condition improved dramatically.
And that would be good.
But they're trying to get him to confess to say something and something, you know, and say, I did this, but, which would all be based on pressure and staying alive.
So he's in a terrible predicament.
But I would think I'd have to be very sympathetic to anything that would make a person more free than he had been in the past and living in a dungeon.
So if that's what's happening, but maybe this is an opening, and I hope the American people wake up, hear about this, and tell their congressmen that they need to support it because there is legislation that they could support to support Assange.
Yeah, let's put it up.
The Wall Street Journal came out with this yesterday, and it was kind of a surprise to a lot of people.
Julian Assange, Justice Department, exploring guilty plea to end 14-year legal drama.
14-year legal drama.
What was his crime?
He was doing journalism.
You know, it really does show you what happens when you cross the deep state.
They come after you.
They released it.
As soon as they released those CIA documents, that was it.
You know, Pompeo plotting to kill him.
A real disaster.
But let's go to this next one.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday said that the U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to allow Julian Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter, opening the possibility of a deal that would end a lengthy legal saga triggered by one of the biggest classified intelligence leaks in American history.
So this is what you were referring to.
And now his attorney, I don't know if I have it on a clip, his attorney said that, denied that there was negotiations about this, so we don't know.
Maybe they're just too sensitive.
The question you bring up is, would you take the plea deal to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information?
There are a lot of implications to that.
Yeah, and the temptation for a principled person who has a long time suffered to say enough is enough.
And others would say, oh, no, you know, be crucified and stick to your guns and live with it.
But I mentioned to you that with thinking about it, but it's hard to make a decision when you're not the person in it.
But I would be sympathetic.
And the analogy I use is, you know, I have voted for an income tax.
If you take an income tax, I described supporting an income tax.
If it's $100 for something on an income tax and they're going to reduce it to $50, I'm going to vote for it because I would see the reduction of the income tax.
So if they're going to dramatically reduce the sentence that is illegal and wrong, I think that point has been made, should be made, and continue to be made.
But I think it would be pretty hard to not take this, if this is true.
But there are others that would say, Ron, you're weakening.
You should stick to the principle.
But I think for me, it would be realistic that if I think, because I've had to deal with people and ideas and consequences that my rule was, are you nedging it toward less government and more freedom?
And you have to take it because nobody's going to, nobody, you can't wait until they deliver to us perfect freedom.
You know, in the broad sense.
So this would be a good step for him.
I believe that's just hoping the next few days we'll find out what's really going on.
Yeah, I mean, for me, I just look at Stella and the two boys, you know, and it would be hard to resist that deal if it ever is made.
But the idea of, you know, I don't see how you can be accused of mishandling classified information when you don't have a security clearance.
You haven't signed an agreement with government to keep information classified.
It seems to me like if this is what they do, and I don't want to put cold water on it, but it would also be chilling to other journalists who leak CIA information, which happens literally every day in the Washington Post, the New York Times.
So it doesn't really solve the problem of how can you continue to accuse a journalist of doing something, this journalist, when all of them do it.
So it's a tough situation.
Well, I think it was Ellisworth back in the 70s or 60s.
And that went with the New York Times.
The New York Times released it, and they won the case.
But with a lot of struggle and a lot of imperfections, but they literally won that case that the New York Times was a journalist and could do what they did.
But right now, this whole thing has been going on all this time.
And they assume that they have absolute proof that Wikileaks is a journalist outfit.
And Assange was not a journalist, but they're going to regulate him anyway.
So it's tragic if what's happened already is tragic.
Even though there might be some improvement here in the next month or year, it's still tragic what they put him through because, like many people make the point, if they can do it for one high-profile person, it's happening already for other people, other people.
And our system is a rotten political judicial system.
And a lot of the activity goes on.
When the people say, oh, you know, those radicals say, you know, it looks like the Democrat Party has taken over the judicial system.
And I think, well, how do you know they have?
And it sounds to me like they have.
But that's what they want to do is write you off as a radical.
But no, I don't think many people in this country, and I think the polling has already showed that there's not much trust in our judicial system.
Yeah, yeah.
I wonder why.
Which is terrible.
Yeah.
We'll go to the next one.
This is just, you mentioned this in your opener, but let's just go through this.
And we actually did a show on in February of this year.
Assange's cause received a big boost when the native Australian, his native Australia, issued a formal request to the U.S. and U.K. that charges against Assange be dropped.
The motion adopted by Australian Parliament at the time emphasized, quote, the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia.
That was good news, and we were hoping at the time that our administration would listen, and they didn't.
To finalize this, let's go to the next clip because this is a little bit more info from the Wall Street Journal.
The discussions remain in flux, and the talks could fizzle.
That's a danger.
Any deal would require the approval of the highest levels of the Justice Department.
Barry Pollock, a lawyer for Assange, said he had been given no indication that the department will take a deal.
Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The report details if prosecutors allow Assange to plead to a U.S. charge of mishandling classified documents, something his lawyers have floated as a possibility, it would be a misdemeanor offense.
And I just read that long part to get to the end.
So that would be a huge reduction if he's only charged with a misdemeanor.
See, the door is open now, and there needs to be an expression of public support for Assange because that's what they do listen to, and that's what they're responding to already, if this story is even half-true.
The people in higher places, like in Australia, are starting to talk differently.
There's a little more conversation in the Congress, and it has to be a political issue, and hopefully this becomes, you know, an issue that makes a difference in the fall.
And, you know, the people who didn't care and they don't understand, but if they understand politics and say, hey, there's a lot of people out there that think that he's been mistreated, they'll join us.
Maybe for the wrong reason, but getting the right results is all that we need right now.
We need people to stand behind Assange and stand behind the First Amendment is what we're doing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's move on because the next story is probably one of the craziest stories I've ever heard.
You sent it over, as it was yesterday or this morning, or yesterday, and I couldn't believe it, from Zero Heads.
Put it on the next one up.
So I won't read the first word of it.
Vigilantes show up to evict squatters at New York House where a homeowner was arrested.
And that title is a lot to chew on, but essentially what it is, is a guy inherited a house from his mother.
And in the meantime, he was getting ready to put it on the market.
Squatters moved in and started living there.
And so he said, this is crazy.
Went to change the locks.
When he changed the locks, they arrested him.
They threatened the guy that owned it, not the guy that was, the people that were squatting.
That's what happens when you defend your house or yourself with a gun.
You get arrested.
And the criminal goes off and it may be a slap on the wrist.
But I think this is, this we can be hopeful and try to rationalize and say, well, this is just a bunch of clowns.
It's New York.
What else would you expect?
And everybody's leaving New York.
Keep leaving and teach them a lesson.
And also, it's not the Supreme Court.
I would hope there would be a more decent discussion and a result from this if it had to go to the Supreme Court.
So this is, but it's a big issue.
What's good is if this would never make the news, that would be bad.
But there's a lot of cases like this that probably never make the news.
And that's what's the problem.
That's just only encouraging them.
We don't hear about it.
That's why people need to know about it.
And in this short day or so, in me talking to people who aren't very political about this, it was on the regular news, and they heard that, and they said, that can't be true.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, there's a lot of things that can't be true that are.
Yeah, I didn't believe it was true either.
But here's actually a tweet that was linked to that.
And this shows this in New York City, if you put that next one on.
A New York City homeowner gets arrested after changing the locks on her own home after it got taken over by squatters.
This is Colin Rugg tweeting out, never do business in New York.
And I didn't know this, Dr. Paul.
In New York City, anyone can simply claim squatters' rights after 30 days of living in a home, which isn't even enough time for the city to do their investigation, their work, and their job, according to homeowner Adele Andoloro.
When the 30-day mark comes, it's illegal to change the locks, remove the tenants, or turn off the utilities.
The bogus law means practically anyone can squat in a home, and there's nothing the homeowner can do about it.
During the news segment, Andolora was arrested for unlawful eviction and taken away in handcuffs.
Absolute insanity.
You've got to be careful.
What they'll say is we're just protecting people's rights.
They call it squatters' rights.
Squatter's rights cancels out the whole concept of hundreds of years and maybe thousands of years of the recognition of property ownership.
Property ownership has been around for a long, long time.
I think the Tenth Commandment says something about property.
You're not supposed to steal and do all that sort of thing.
And even before that time, there was a recognition of property.
But no, this is not the owner of property.
These are squatters' rights.
As long as they say rights, you know, think how many times the far left use the word rights, you know, in terms of just using authoritarian principles.
They're always giving somebody some rights, but they never talk about at whose expense.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just crazy.
You know, if you look at the article, the people who are living there, they're shameless.
They're looking out the window.
Can you, I mean, I couldn't imagine such a thing.
So, well.
You know, I want to just want to mention one thing because you mentioned a word that I like to discuss, and that's shame.
And they are shameless.
And that to me is an indication that they don't have a conscience.
They don't have any understanding of a higher principle, what is right and wrong, and telling the truth.
And that's why they're shameless.
And the advantage there for them, temporarily, of course, is that they still live with, because they have no shame, they don't look like they're suffering.
Shameless Republican Old Guard 00:10:41
But I believe that ultimately they're going to suffer from their inconsistency.
Maybe a lot of them have that already, realizing, well, I'm going to do this.
And they rationalize, and then they reach a point where they can't do it anymore, and they have to come clean.
But they're shameless, and that's a sign that they have no sense of right and wrong.
Yeah.
And this isn't a little shock.
I mean, this is worth a million dollars.
Imagine you inherit a million-dollar house from your mom.
You're like, oh, finally, I'm not off to work.
And then you can't kick the people.
Yeah, you know, that would be a tragedy in itself.
But then to say that you're the one that did something wrong.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm defending my house.
Well, I'm afraid we're not done with the outrages of the day, Dr. Paul.
Our last story for the day is disturbing.
I hope it's not true.
I hope, I fear that it is, and I hope it's not.
Put the next one up.
This is from Semaphore.
This is a new alternative media journal founded by all mainstream media people.
So with that said, I would say take it with a grain of salt.
But they reported On March 19th, the senators who could fill Trump's national security cabinet, and it immediately caught my attention because it shows Senator Cotton on the cover of the picture accompanying the article.
Go to the next clip.
This is truly disturbing.
Donald Trump is eyeing three Republican senators, Bill Haggerty, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio for key national security posts if he wins the White House in November.
People close to the Trump campaign told Semaphore.
The conservative lawmakers are all prominent hawks on China and Iran and supporters of increased U.S. spending on defense and border security.
Trump sees the politicians as potentially partnering with cabinet members and advisors from his first term to create a more unified National Security team from day one, the people said.
Now, the only thing I would say to me, this sounds like the neocons are trying to imagine something in place and having it happen.
But that said, it could be.
See, you explained the new magazine, Semaphore, but maybe I don't know much about them.
But are you sure this is not Onion?
Yeah, yeah, I wish it was.
It is sad that those names don't affect most Republicans.
Most Republicans, oh, yeah, we really love that Mike Pompeo and that whole group Cotton they love.
The authoritarians, the hawks, the ones who spend money and pretend they're economic conservatives.
There's another budget coming up, like they've offered another budget this week, you know, to try to keep from closing down.
But these people will be the ones that will vote for this.
Yet, these, so this hope, this is just a rumor, you know, that, you know, what they're implying is Trump, this is Trump's cabinet, you know, coming up.
And if that's the case, we're in big trouble because that was one of the biggest criticisms that, in a way, Trump accepted, that he had some poor choices in his first administration.
But it doesn't look like this is an improvement.
Yeah.
No, on the contrary.
In fact, it even gets worse.
And you mentioned another name.
Go to the next one.
Among the first-term confidants that Trump is expected to consider for top jobs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo himself is going to go back.
John Radcliffe, one-time congressman who served as director of national intelligence, super neocon.
And former National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien.
Now, he's the guy that kept running interference and prevented our friend Doug McGregor from putting out a plan to get rid of to get out of Syria and Afghanistan.
Super neocon, super hateful guy.
They all also talk about Fred Fleitz, who's always around town, neocon.
And I think, you know, the people that wrote this are well-connected people.
And I think they're putting this out because they want the rest of us to look and say, oh, these people have a lot of experience.
They're very experienced in foreign policy and national security.
But I'm going to look at their experience.
Everything they've done is wrong.
I'm going to have to talk to a senator that I know pretty well because he was annoyed because the rumors were flying and there was a candidate doing quite well.
Her name was Nikki.
And he took a stand and it wasn't a wishwasher stand.
He says, if she comes near this, I am not going to, I will not support her ever.
And if somebody puts him in their administration, I will not support them.
So he drew a red line.
I'll bet you people believed he was going to stick to it.
And fortunately, she sort of faded, and he gets a little bit of credit on that one.
But you never know.
I mean, with Trump, she could be back.
And I don't know.
I don't follow it very closely.
I haven't seen a rand endorsement of Trump.
So maybe he's still keeping his powder dry, which is probably a smart move.
If you think back how we got our current vice president, she came in the last.
She was out of the race for president in the very early election in the month.
Nobody voted for her.
So she was tossed out.
So what did Biden do?
She fit the category.
She fit some categories description.
It has nothing to do with she believed in.
Nothing to check out about, is she really a constitutionalist?
But you know what?
I don't think she ever recovered because even though they put her in there, they say, well, she helped Trump, she helped Biden win the election.
But who knows about that?
Who knows?
There may have been a third party in the election involved in that.
Yeah, absolutely.
But that's a shame.
And I think that's what, in a way, you could almost think about Nikki.
And you guarded against assuming, oh, they've lost out and they're done.
But no, some of the people that look like they lose by the public, and they don't, you think, well, that isn't even good politics.
But they do it and they get away with it because they have a lot of people that can manufacture a lot of disingenuous propaganda.
Yeah.
This looks to me like Trump has learned nothing if this is the case.
And I hope these guys are wrong, but it'll look like he's learned nothing.
If you go to the next clip, and I highlighted this, this is horrible.
Rubio, who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, could be a fit to head the CIA.
Putting little Marco Rubio as the head of the CIA would be astounding.
I mean, this is the old guard of the Republican Party that people are sick of.
This is the Mitch McConnell wing of the party that people are sick of.
The younger members of the party that we talk about a lot, Thomas Massey, people like him who don't buy into this.
I mean, yeah, well, people should take a look at what I have written about the day and the year that the republic was lost, you know, and that, of course, was 1963.
Because I saw so clearly that our resources, like the FBI and the CIA, they weren't on our side.
They were on the side of the assassinations that they still have.
And they're in every country.
They're on the side of the people, like the coup in Ukraine.
You think the CIA wasn't available there?
So that's the thing that people should realize that.
And it's been a long time since I guess the people felt comfortable that the government was leveling with us.
But this to me is a gimmick, and they play the game, and they're looking for power, and they end up with it.
They have so much clout, of course, now, but we're looking for any leaks into the Republican Party.
It looks like, unfortunately, that my assumption that there's not a whole lot different on the big issues between the two parties.
And if they put the same people in, there's a Republican and the Democrat, there's really no change because it's those people, you know, the truth is, a president, no matter how dedicated he was, he better have a good staff because, you know, there's too much to be personally involved in, personally making these decisions because it's too big.
And that's the strongest argument for shrinking government so you can control it and understand what it is and afford it.
You know, the last thing I would say about this, it's the thing that's so annoying about it is people like Pompeo and little Marco Rubio, they're considered experts.
These guys are the experts.
Again, as I said, everything they've endorsed has been wrong, has gone terribly badly.
Now they want to go to war with China.
We can't even beat the Houthis, right?
In Yemen, they want to go to war with China and with Iran.
I mean, it's just, they are absolute and utter failures in everything they do.
And for Trump to reward them with positions.
Well, there's one position that has been adopted by both parties that I could talk for a long time, but I don't think under the conditions of today we can convert them.
And that is the rejection of free trade, which is something that took years to develop and understand, even though the founders understood that.
You didn't do those kind of things.
But now it's both sides.
How are we going to punish sanctions?
And then you have these guys running the DOD.
One group will come on with the sanctions, the next group will come on with the bombs.
And the next group will be coming to the draft because everybody needs foot soldiers.
But one of those days, we're going to go broke and we won't be able to afford it.
Yeah, and it won't be funny.
Well, anyway, we'll keep an eye on it.
I hope these guys are totally wrong.
I hope he finds good people.
If he wins, you know, we never know.
But I'm going to sign off and thank everyone for watching the show.
Please go to ronpaulinstitute.org and subscribe to updates for the Ron Paul Institute.
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Thanks very much.
And over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, we talked about a lot of things today, and I mentioned the principles of liberty and independence and our Constitution.
Importance Of Property Rights 00:01:08
But today we mentioned something directly related to the definition of rights.
And it's an outrage which I think will get an audience out there.
Well, I don't believe this.
This hasn't gone that well.
And that's squatters' rights.
That all they have to do, oh, an empty house, let's move in.
And guess what?
Sometimes that's an illegal alien that comes in and they go in and they either tear up the house or assume that it's theirs.
And there's no recourse.
In New York, it's so bad that they really have the upper hand legally.
So I think the definition of property rights is so important because I think the First Amendment can come up much more positive if you recognize property rights.
You know, your newspaper is your newspaper and you shouldn't have to be regulated by the government.
So there's a lot of examples that nobody can walk into your church and change what you're saying in your church or your home or anyplace else.
So property rights are very important.
And I think this whole idea of squatter's right, hopefully it serves a purpose of waking some people up and deciding that maybe private property ownership is very, very important in a free society.
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