Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Russiagate Docs Released?

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Aaron Maté: Russiagate Docs Released?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025. Aaron Monte joins us now. Aaron, a pleasure. My dear friend, I want to talk to you about something that you have done a tremendous amount of research on, which as you know is the so-called Russiagate documents and when they're going to come out and what you expect. But before that, I want to pick your brains on a couple of other things. How do you account

or do you have an opinion on the recent bellicosity of the language of Prime Minister Stammer, European Commission President Vandelaar and French President Macron? I mean this is almost farcical, isn't it? It is farcical, but they're grappling with the fact that there's now a chief proxy war sponsor in Washington and Donald Trump Who's no longer willing to play along with this whole ruse that? That the NATO alliance is in in Ukraine for as long as it takes Trump is pulling the plug on that and accordingly showing Europe their place. They were always subordinates in this proxy war coalition Yes, they provided some weaponry to Ukraine,

but as a recent New York Times front page article underscores, it was the US running the show the entire time, to the point where from a US military base in Germany, US commanders were choosing the targets for Ukraine to hit and helping them directly hit them. I'm talking about Russian targets inside of Ukraine. And the way they got out of the semantically, this is one of the few interesting revelations

in this article. The way they got out of the semantically is rather than calling Russian targets, targets, they called them points of interest. So that way, technically they can say, no, we're not helping Ukraine select targets, simply by changing the word from targets to points. Well, this is Orwell on steroids.

They can call it what they want, but this is the United States of America targeting Russian assets, which means military equipment and human beings and causing human beings to be killed by American equipment. The triggers on which were fired either by Americans or Ukrainians. We have been directly at war with Russia using Ukrainians as the bullet stoppers. Short of sending our own troops, we've been at war with Russia and this New York Times article underscores that. It also reveals that it was the US that helped plan all these counter offenses.

This idea that we were just following Ukraine's lead, all that is put to the side in this article. It was the US devising all these plans from the start. And amazingly, they still, in the article, the Times, US sources throw Ukraine under the bus. The reason they say why all this failed is not because we did anything wrong, it's because Ukrainians didn't follow the plan

to our specifications. So it's incredibly cynical. Here's a Belikos secretary general of NATO, I don't know if this number is true, 20 billion, but boasting about what he says the EU has given to Ukraine. Chris, cut number three. NATO allies continue our support to Ukraine. In the first three months of this year,

allies have already pledged more than 20 billion euros in security assistance for 2025. It pledged. Exactly, Judge. It delivered. Okay, I didn't catch that. That's the key word, it's pledged. There was a recent article in the New York Times about how Europe is struggling to find

its identity now that Trump is pulling the plug on the proxy war. And there's a quote from some European leader who says, yes, we're the coalition of the willing, but willing to do what? They don't even know. They call themselves the coalition of the willing, but they don't know what they're willing to do because they can't do anything.

It's the US running the show all along. And if the US pulls away, it looks like Trump is doing, then Europe's role is finished. Has Trump pulled the plug? Aren't we still sending massive amounts back from a prior Congress that authorized it, and obviously a prior president who signed it? But aren't we still, isn't the pipeline still open? The Joe Biden pipeline? The pipeline is still open. And as long as as it is Ukraine will keep fighting, but when it runs out and it will run out, then what is Trump going to do? Is Trump really going to go to before Congress and ask for tens of billions of dollars

in additional funding for this proxy war that he campaigned against? Look, it's possible. He campaigned as the antiwar candidate. He campaigned against bombing Yemen. Now he's bombing Yemen on behalf of Israel. So anything is possible. But on this issue, given that you've seen from Trump and his top principals, so much criticism of this war, saying it never should have started, blaming Biden. I just don't see Trump backing down on this one as much as he's been too faced about war.

On this one, I think I'll stick to his guns. On Yemen, Pepesco Bar says that the Yemenis' determination to continue to do their best to prevent Israeli shipping is undiminished, that the vast majority of what Heg Seth and his colleagues have attacked and destroyed has been civilian infrastructure. The people killed have been civilians. Uh, there's no, uh, groundswell for war in the United States against Yemen.

We've been bombing Yemen since George W. Bush was in the white house in 2002. It doesn't seem to have had any effect. Where is this going? Does this just enable Donald Trump to say, hey, Bibi, look what we did for you lately? I think that's exactly what it is. The US has been aiding and abetting a war on Yemen

for a very long time. Recently, last month was the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama authorizing a Saudi bombardment of Yemen, in which the US played an integral role under both Obama and then Trump in his first term and then Biden once again. So that policy hasn't dislodged on Ansarullah al-Houthi. I don't see why Trump is any different except as Pepe Escobar pointed out, killing lots of civilians as we know happened in that strike that Mike Walt was so giddy about in the Signal

Chat. in that strike that Mike Walt was so giddy about in the Signal Chat? The Signal Chat, excuse me, in the Signal Chat there was not a single syllable about the morality or lawfulness of doing this. It was only the process. In fact, if you read the whole thing, if you read what the vice president said, you wonder if Trump even knew they were having this chat. That's true. You know, JD Vance alluded to the fact that Trump might not even understand what the bombing of Yemen is about. JD Vance was opposing it,

but JD Vance couldn't even articulate why the US was bombing Yemen, which was on behalf of Israel. JD Vance said this was for Europe, even though this has nothing to do with Europe. This is on behalf of Israel, because the Houthis on Sar-Allah were intervening against ships in a bid to pressure Israel to respect the ceasefire and stop imposing a starvation siege on Gaza.

That's why Trump is bombing Yemen. And it's funny that JD Vance, the one opponent of this or critic of this, couldn't even articulate why Trump was doing it. Excuse me. I wonder, Pep Eskobar wonders if the ships at Diego Garcia are there to attack Iran or attack Yemen? Well, that's a great question. And Trump has been increasingly belligerent in his rhetoric.

He's been directly threatening Iran. What did he tell NBC News the other day that if Iran doesn't abandon its nuclear program and make a deal, then there will be bombing that we've never seen before. And he's also blaming Iran for the actions of Ansarallah, even though as far as I know, Ansarallah, the Houthis, acts pretty autonomously, not at Iran's direction. So Trump is forgetting that he campaigned against war. He promised to restore peace to the Middle East.

As we can see in the ongoing destruction of Gaza and his bombing of Yemen, he's doing the exact opposite, at least in that region of the world. Just wanna find a tape here that I want to run for you. Bear with me for a minute. Oh, here's the, you'll get a kick out of this. The State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, who's worse than Matt Miller, at least Miller looked you in the eye when he talked to you. He didn't read off of a, off of a, an iPad.

Here she is yesterday about Iran or it's actually three days ago. Cut number 18. Iran's behavior across the globe threatens US national interests, which is why President Trump reimposed the maximum pressure campaign designed to end Iran's nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop it from supporting terrorist groups. As the President has said, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. He has also been very clear that the United States can't allow that to occur. The President expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran, as we know. If the Iranian regime does not want a deal the president is clear he will pursue other options which will be very bad for Iran. I am bored to tears watching her read like that.

How do the journalists perceive her as being credible when all she does is read something somebody else wrote? It's a great question. There was such relief seeing the end of the Biden administration after so much just malicious lying for so long in defense of Israel and so much disingenuous rhetoric coming from the aforementioned Matt Miller. But now what does the Trump administration do? It's Matt Miller but even with less of an effort to even appear fair-minded, you know, the Biden administration pretended to care about Palestinian rights and about the international law. Now everything is all just Iran, Hamas, everything that's Hamas' fault, and it's all just the

Israeli talking points, 100%. Whereas with Biden administration, sometimes they would say, we're going to pressure Israel to comply with the... Now the Trump administration basically basically reads Israel scripts. It doesn't even bother to pretend that they are any different than the Israeli government in terms of policy. Now perhaps that's refreshing.

At least they're more honest up there, and they're brazen support for Israel. But from a moral point of view, and from the point of view of people who thought that maybe Trump represented America first, not Israel first, it's disappointing. Talking about that, I sense no outrage, domestically or internationally, to reports of the IDF executing 15 UN aid workers, one after another after another. Civilians, unarmed, murdered, execution style. Why is there no outrage? Is there so much

death that doesn't phase anymore? That's what it is. This genocide has become normalized. Israel has carried out some of the worst crimes in human history before our eyes and with our support. And because our media does such a good job covering up for it and whitewashing the atrocities, it's become normal now. It's become normal to wake up every day and see countless images of dead Palestinian children on your screen, is that that's like a routine occurrence, like the weather. And so atrocities that would otherwise attract singular attention, the execution of Palestinian medics found in horrific conditions. Now it just seems like routine. That's the reality we're living with.

You know, the way I try to deal with it is listen, that there have been horrific atrocities in human history, horrific crimes, horrific outbursts of collective insanity like the Nazi Holocaust. And this is just one that we're living through right now. We're all here for it. So it's Really defense minister whose name is Israel Katz

Announced that the IDF would be capturing more territory in Gaza And the spokesperson for the family of the hostage just said, oh you're trading our family members for land Does that resonate with Netanyahu or not? Well, he doesn't care about the Haas's families, obviously. He could have gotten all of them released long ago, even before his forces entered Gaza, when Hamas offered to release everybody if Israel promised not to do an invasion.

And there have been many more opportunities since. He doesn't care. He just doesn't care. His goal, as he's made clear, is to force as many Palestinians as possible to leave. He just basically touted Trump's plan, which is ethnic cleansing. And that's what he's pursuing now. He is taking every opportunity he can to destroy as much of Gaza as possible and to force as many people as possible to leave. Tell us what you expect the Russiagate documents, if they're revealed, to show. And did Trump order the Cash Patel FBI to reveal the documents from the Jim Comey years? Is that what we're expecting?

Trump just signed a new declassification order, but the order is limited It covers a so-called binder of documents that he tried to have released at the very end of his first term But then mysteriously pulled back on now what I know about this binder is low-hanging fruit It's a lot of material about the FBI's reliance on the steel dossier Which is the collection of Hillary Clinton-funded conspiracy theories, and also messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were two FBI officials prominent in the Trump-Russia probe, who were very biased against Trump. But we know all this already. We know the collusion aspect of Russiagate was a complete scam.

The part that still endures and that elements of the intelligence community, some, are still endorsing is that Russia waged the sweeping interference campaign to brainwash Americans into not voting for Hillary and installing Trump. And I know for a fact that there are documents inside the government that call this into question. The House Intelligence Committee, back when it was led by Devin Nunes and Cash Patel, who was working for Devin Nunes, conducted their own review of this really important report that came out right before Trump took office the first time, this so-called intelligence community assessment overseen by John Brennan and James Clapper, who were prominent in the Russiagate fraud.

And Nunes' committee did a review of this and they found significant failings and were very critical, including on the core allegation that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. I know that that's in there. That's never been released. When Trump tried to release it in his first term, officials like William Barr threw a fit because they didn't want to embarrass the CIA and the FBI. They didn't want to undermine this core allegation

that was used not only to taint Trump's presidency by saying it was the product of Russian interference, but also that was used to drum up tensions with Russia because this led to Russian diplomats being expelled. This led to constant fear-mongering about Russia interfering on our pristine democracy. And that, just as much as the collusion aspect, was a complete scam as well. We know already from the available evidence that the FBI was relying on CrowdStrike, which

was another Clinton campaign contractor. Just as the FBI was relying on Christopher Steele for its collusion investigation, it was also relying on CrowdStrike for its Russian hacking allegation. And as Ray McGovern has tirelessly pointed out, what did CrowdStrike admit when its president had to testify under oath to Congress?

He admitted, oh yeah, we have no evidence of Russian hacking. And that revelation was buried throughout the entirety of the Mueller probe So on this core allegation of rush so-called Russian interference in Russian hacking Which in my opinion is just as much of a scam as the collusion aspect We're still missing critical evidence that could be released from declassified documents But so far Trump is not moving on declassifying those as far as I know all right So what you're talking about are intelligence community documents, not FBI documents.

Well, the FBI certainly has this information as well. They're sitting on stuff that I think would be interesting. But it goes beyond the FBI, because again, the CIA was involved in this. The CIA was involved in a domestic interference operation, framing a president for being a Russian agent and accusing Russia baselessly of waging a sweeping interference campaign.

And John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, was all over it. And so was his counterpart at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. And their predecessors have continued covering up for them. We still have not gotten a thorough review of what they did. To the point where John Durham, who was authorized to conduct a sweeping review of all of this, he totally ignored the Russian hacking allegation because it was too big to fail. You just don't. It was like Iraq WMDs. It was so important to this narrative needed to, you know, fear monger about Russia that even John Durham, who was authorized to go there, didn't even go there. As I recall, Durham did little more than prosecute a low-level lawyer in the FBI.

I think his name was Kevin Kline Smith for tinkering with an affidavit that had been submitted to the FISA court. I mean, think about Trump. Trump hates, you know what it's like when he hates somebody, Trump hates Clapper and Brennan. He stripped their lifetime security clearances. Why doesn't he just tell Gabbard and Ratcliffe, release this stuff, stop sitting on it? The problem is John Brennan is the former director of the CIA. He knows a lot. And you don't mess

with someone like that. You know, you just don't. I just think that's part of the problem here. These people are too big to fail. Even though he personally targeted and helped frame a president for treason, essentially, for conspiring with Russia. John Brennan was all over it. He's still hard to touch. That's why, you know, when John Durham interviewed John Brennan as part of his probe, the first thing he told him was,

don't worry, John Brennan, you're not under investigation here. We just want to talk to you. That's why when they interviewed Hillary Clinton, also another powerful person, they treated her with kid gloves. And that's why when Jim Comey said to John Durham, yeah, I'm not gonna talk to you, I don't wanna talk to you. Did John Durham go and get a subpoena?

As Robert Mueller did so many times for people who didn't wanna talk to him, no. Because again, James Comey was it was just too big to fail too big to touch and he was able to defy John Durham. So for real accountability, yes, it's going to have to come from the top. It's going to have to come from Trump saying this was a scam. The American people deserve to know that they were lied to about all of this, not just on collusion, but also on so-called Russian interference.

And we can achieve that by declassifying documents that are already there. This House intelligence report from 2017 that I talked about earlier, it's sitting under lock and key at the CIA. That's how sensitive it is. There are some powerful things that will be released. Was this written by Devin Nunes and Cash Patel? Correct. Correct. And I've interviewed Cash Mattel about this before and what he told me was that he tried to have this

released at the end of Trump's first term and Trump was going to do it. But then top officials, including William Barr intervened and blocked it. What do you expect these documents to show? Well, what I'm most curious about again for years, it's funny to think about it now because it seems so trivial, but for years, this was the top story in the country that Russia was waging this sweeping and systematic interference campaign in our democracy to show division create chaos and everyone

took this seriously the media rather than saying what is your evidence for this that they just wrote it down as fact and I know for a fact the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes looked at this and was critical and pointed out that there were some significant problems with this conclusion that, again, under John Brendan's direction, the intelligence community came to. This was a John Brennan product. This is not an intelligence community product. In fact, John Brennan sidelined key intelligence officials, handpicked a few people to basically say what he wanted to say, which

was that Russia was responsible for putting Trump in the White House and waged the sweeping interference campaign. So I expect actually the factual basis for that conclusion, that very important conclusion to be scrutinized. And that's what these documents that could come out would do if we ever are allowed to see them. Let me switch gears before we end. Here's the latest on Kursk. That's the area of Russia that was invaded by the Ukrainians from which they've largely been expelled. Cut number two. The government continues to support the residents of the Kursk region. A whole range of measures are being taken to help them, including monthly payments,

as per the president's instructions. Today we will additionally allocate about 16 billion rubles for those who have lost their homes. Affected citizens will be able to use these funds to purchase or build new houses and apartments. We hope that these resources will help families solve this problem and most importantly return to normal life. Is that fighting still going on? It is still going on.

There's still some Ukrainian forces there, but Russia has mostly won that battle as was widely predicted. I mean, on this show, we talked about this a lot. This incursion into Kursk was launched, I believe, in August. And what was happening then, that was right after the NATO summit where once again Zelensky was disappointed because he was not given NATO membership. That was something Biden dangled in front of his face to get him to keep fighting Russia and to get Russia to keep fighting Ukraine. But then when the time came for a pledge, Biden said, forget it, you're not ready. And so Zelensky, I think, launched this operation in Kursk to stay relevant, to change the narrative, to show something that could justify continued proxy war funding.

And there was a lot of excitement about this at first. We got the standard articles in places like the New York Times saying that this is an audacious operation, that Russia was taken by total surprise and was going to be pushed back. But inevitably, as was always the case throughout this war, Russia, because of its sheer size and power, was always going to push this back. And for Ukraine, it caused a double problem because they had to divert forces from the Donbas front, which is the most important front for Russia's perspective, to go fight in Kursk. And they sent forces into Kursk that had been specifically trained to fight in Donbas to help propel Russian forces there.

So you ended up tying up Russia a little bit in Kursk, but also, meanwhile, weakening Ukraine in the Donbas. And that's why we've seen increasing Russian advances there. So this was yet another failure by Zelensky, all because he just wanted to stay relevant and justify continued proxy or funding that keeps him afloat. Aaron Mate, thank you, my dear friend. Thanks for your time and for your analysis. Safe travels.

We'll see you again next week. Thank you, Judge. Of course. All the best. Coming up at three o'clock today, Phil Giraldi and at 415, the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You