Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : Can the President Kill Outside of War?

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : Can the President Kill Outside of War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Don't let an expensive wireless bill disrupt your summer plans. As you map out beach getaways, backyard gatherings, and long weekends, your wireless bill shouldn't be a source of stress. With Mint Mobile, you get the reliable coverage and high-speed performance you're used to at a significantly lower cost. For a limited time, Mint is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for just $15 a month, while others are dealing. with overage fees and surprise charges, you can enjoy peace of mind and more money in your

pocket. Say goodbye to overpriced plans and hello to simple, straightforward wireless service. Every Mint mobile plan includes high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and access to the nation's largest 5G network. Plus, you can keep your current phone number and contacts. Make the switch and get three months of unlimited service for just $15 a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash freedom. That's mintmobile.com slash freedom. Up front payment of $45 required.

That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 9th, 20205. Ambassador Chas Freeman will be here with us in just a minute on this topic. Can the President kill people outside of wartime? But first this, my friends, if you care about your liberty and your right to control your own future, you need to hear about this.

From October 10th to 12th, Mikhail Thorpe, host of the Expat Money Show, is bringing together top experts from around the world for the expat money online summit, and it's completely free to attend. You'll learn how to legally protect your wealth, secure second residences, and citizenships, reduce your tax burden, and, own property abroad, all to safeguard your freedom. This year's focus is on Latin America, where opportunity is booming. Argentina is shifting to free markets. El Salvador is undergoing a dramatic transformation, and Panama and Paraguay are offering simple residency programs. A plan B is no longer optional.

It's essential. Reserve your free ticket at expatmoneysummit.com. And if you want VIP access with special perks, including lifetime replay access and exclusive VIP panels, use promo code judge for 20% off your upgrade. That's expatmoneysummit.com promo code judge. Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you for your time this morning. And before we get to this rather chilling topic of presidential killing outside of wartime, how near to the end, in your view, is the Ukrainian military as it attempts to resist the Russian special military operation? It's pretty near to the end.

The front seems to be crumbling slowly. there's nothing that the coalition of the diluted in Europe can do to stop this and the United States has basically turned this issue over to the Europeans so there's a question about how long Mr. Zelensky can stay in power I think he understands that Ukraine has basically lost the war but he's boxed in by right-wing, ultra-nationalists, the same people who forced him to abandon his campaign platform when he was first elected. You know, he ran on a platform of peace and accommodation with the Russians, and six weeks

later he was the ferocious avatar of Winston Churchill that we've seen ever since. So I don't know exactly. That's a military question in part, but it's also a political question because 69% of Ukrainians apparently, according to Poles, want a negotiated peace. And Mr. Zelensky is not my position to provide one. In the meantime, the United States is continuing to conduct basically a property war against Russia, certainly rhetorically. You see things like the effort to put a total embargo of secondary sanctions on China, India, Brazil, anybody who's importing oil and gas from Russia, something that would probably give the global economy apoplexy and bring it down. But anyway, there's a sense of desperation, I think, about the whole thing. You mentioned the coalition of the willing and absurd name given the outcome of the Afghan and Iraq wars,

and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's selection of that name, but be that as it may. How do you read their professed determination without resources and assets? to want to help the ukrainians or i should say that i want to help the ukrainians that want to resist the russians well that's why i call them the coalition of the diluted because they can't do anything they don't have the financial muscle to do anything important financially if they were to confiscate the russian reserves they hold that would discredit their banking system and remove them as a force in the global economy where people, as you as the advertisements on your show illustrate, are very concerned

about the security of currencies and their deposits. Bankers can't steal the funds that their depositors place with them and hope to continue to be bankers. So they don't have the financial muscle. They don't have the military muscle. The United States does not have the capacity, even if they come up with the money, to provide Ukraine with a flood of weapons. Our stocks are low. We need to take care of ourselves. We have other demands on us. Unfortunately, we're providing Israel with a wherewithal to conduct its genocide in Gaza. That is an American priority, apparently.

And finally, I guess I keep coming back to the point that the Europeans have no vision at all. The only proposals they have would prolong this war indefinitely in Ukraine, kill more Ukrainians who are dying in vastly larger numbers than Russians, and accomplish nothing. They need to come up with a vision of peace. and some mechanism for achieving it. In the meantime, the Russians plow forward. They're not going to stop. They have a lot invested in this,

and they are here determined to take all of Donetsk, they hold all of Ugansk already, and if they are not offered a compromise, they will probably take Odessa and Nikolayev as some of the new maps that we see in the Russian Command Center illustrate. Do you accept the thesis that President Putin is managing the war with great patience, not because he's virtuous, but because he wants to eliminate as many human beings in the Ukrainian army as possible, so that Russia doesn't have to go through this

for at least another generation. Well, he is conducting a war of attrition, which has precisely that effect. It has depopulated Ukraine, not just because people have fled the draft, conscription, and gone to places like Poland and other places in Europe or Canada and some in the United States,

but because a huge number of people are dying on the battlefield, and another large number have been wounded and basically incapacitated for life. But his objective is a separate one. He wants to eliminate any threat to Russian state security from Ukraine. And that is why when the Europeans and others put forward proposals for so-called resilience forces or peacekeepers from NATO countries in Ukraine, This is a complete non-starter.

That's why he started the war. He doesn't want foreign troops. He won't accept foreign troops in Ukraine any more than the United States accepted Soviet missiles in Cuba. Here's Mr. Peshkov, the official spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peshkov, five days ago. Chris, cut number one. We consider it a danger for us, presence of international force.

or any foreign forces or NATO country forces on the soil of Ukraine next to our borders. So in our understanding, it will not help us get closer to the solution of Ukrainian country. But why doesn't Ukraine have the right, as far as Russia is concerned, to invite whoever it wants, whichever soldiers it wants, onto its territory? I mean, Russia is inviting North Korean troops. Then it's a danger for us. It's a real danger for us, because we are an enemy of NATO. This is North Korean troops are a danger to Ukraine.

This is written in NATO's documents. So we cannot afford that. And we'll do whatever is necessary to ensure our security. He's right. It is written in NATO's founding documents that Russia is an enemy of NATO. Correct. And the questioner, really, that is a terribly stupid question. Does that questioner accept that Cuba has the right to invite Russian or Chinese forces to aim their missiles at the United States?

Of course, we don't accord them such a right. Did Mexico have the right to have French troops stationed in it during our civil war aimed at establishing an imperial presence in the Americas? Do we not have a Monroe doctrine, which says, that no foreign our extra hemispheric power can play in our backyard. I mean, the hypocrisy here, the double standard is just astonishing. French President Macron will soon need to appoint his fifth, one, two, three, four, five, Prime Minister in two years. How do you read this? Well, the instability of politics in the Western democratic world is now ubiquitous.

There's a great gap between those who govern and those who are governed. Popular opinion has very little regard for the political elites that we elect to higher office. And I don't think Macron is an exception to this. He came out of virtually nowhere. He may be going back to nowhere. At the same time that he's confronted with the dissolution of his government, German Chancellor Macron is attacking President Putin in unusually personal and by tuperative ways, calling him the worst war criminal of our time.

Of course, the worst war criminal of our time is. receiving German military equipment in Tel Aviv, but we can talk about that in a few minutes. But why an outburst like that? I mean, he's on ice in terms of the stability of his government just as thin as Macron, is he not? Yes, I think he is. And I think he's out of touch and out of line with German public opinion for the most part. I think his government is fragile. And of course, bituporation, insults get you virtually nothing internationally except counter-bituration and insults. And, of course, the history of the German relationship with Russia is not quite one that makes Russia out to be the great aggressive. I think the Germans have a long history of antagonism to the Russians.

Back to the Middle Ages, and he's reflecting that sentiment. But I don't think it is the majority sentiment in Germany, and I think he places his own government in additional jeopardy by taking that line. Secretary of State Rubio, I'm bouncing around here on topics, announced over the weekend that the State Department would begin scrutinizing the social media and public statements of those from Latin America who are seeking visas to come to the United States, even for a two-week vacation. The stated purpose is we want to find out who are Chinese spies.

I mean, this to me sounds ridiculous, but what's with Rubio and the State Department, Trump and Hegseth, all of a sudden and Latin America? Well, it looks as though there is a rubio-driven, perhaps Silbridge-Colvey-driven shift of the focus of the American military away from extra-hamispheric deployments, Europe, Asia, and toward the United States, domestic use. So we have threats for the U.S. Army to invade Chicago, Baltimore, whatever. We have the Army patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., and we have something approaching a police state in terms of warrantless surveillance and detention of people who meet some profile that the immigration and customs enforcement or ICE agents are applying. I don't believe for a minute that the purpose of scrutinizing social media on cell phones and the like regard to visa applicants has anything to do with smoking out Chinese spies who probably are unlikely to have stuff on their phone that it would have them to be spies.

whether it's they're looking for people who are anti-Trump and here we have we have a personality cult supported by a growing police state that is what this is and it is totally un-American and unprecedented tell me what you think of this this is the Spanish Prime Minister yesterday making some very, very strong, in my view, profoundly accurate, maybe even underestimated in the numbers he gives, observations about the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people. Where will something like this go? Chris, cut number eight.

What Prime Minister Netanyahu presented in October 2023 as a military operation in response to the atrocious terrorist attacks by Hamas has ended up becoming a new wave of illegal occupations, an unjustifiable attack against the Palestinian civilian population, an attack that the United Nations Special Rapporteur and the majority of experts already describe as. The data speak for themselves, 63,000 dead, 159,000 wounded, 250,000 people, at risk of acute malnutrition, and nearly 2 million people displaced from their homes. Half of them, a significant proportion, are innocent minors. This situation is unequivocally not an act of self-defense. It is not even a mere attack. Instead, it represents the systematic

extermination of a defenseless and vulnerable people. Furthermore, it constitutes a grave violation of all the established and fundamental laws of international humanitarian law. Does a statement like that from a relatively neutral Western European country carry weight? Yes, I think it does. Spain has distinguished itself along with Ireland and a number of other European countries by calling out what Israel has been doing very accurately. I agree with you, however, those numbers are not really accurate. They represent a policy by the former governing authorities in Gaza of counting only the dead who have been individually identified at a hospital or a morgue.

most people who've studied the demographics of Gaza believe that the numbers closer to 300,000 did. So those numbers are wrong, but the Prime Minister Sanchez has the basic facts absolutely correct. And he took action. He has suspended most interactions with Israel and the transshipment of weapons through Spanish territory to Israel, baned the transshipment of weapons through Spanish territory to Israel, ban the export of weapons by Spain to Israel, and he's setting an example that I believe some others will follow, unfortunately not all. Can the President of the United States just declare a person or a group to be at war with the United States and thereby justify the summary execution of that person or members

of the group? Two problems with that. First, the Constitution reserves to the Congress, the right to establish a state of war by declaring it. A state of war then enables various actions in support of the defense of the country. Congress has done no such thing. In fact, it remains basically absent without leave on a number of issues, including the war power. Second, the president has no inherent authority to murder anyone, even if he boasted that he could do so on Fifth Avenue, and no one would care. And he has been murdering people, mostly foreigners, but now some Americans. So we don't know who was on that speedboat that we so bravely sunk, traveling between Venezuela and Trinidad. We don't know who those people were.

there's never been any explanation. There is a claim that they were drug smugglers, but people who know about drug smugglings make a number of points. There is no evidence that fentanyl is coming out of Venezuela. The UN has a long report on drug smuggling in the Western atmosphere and considers Venezuela one of the least responsible for that. the statement that the government is operating is part of a cartel, Cartel de Rosales, is without substantiation.

And even if all that were true, there is no right under international law or American law or the Constitution for the president to order the murder of people. No due process, no hearing, no interrogation. And he basically prevented the Navy from doing what it would normally do. which is intercepting the speedbow and interrogating the people aborted and searching it for contraband and confiscating the contraband and turning any any evidence of illegality over to law enforcement he stopped that he just said kill them he has no right to do that the BBC is reporting that the flotilla of aid ships

Slowly making their way to Gaza, this one contains the international climate activist, Greta Thunberg, was hit by a drone. So you have a civilian unarmed ship being attacked by somebody. I've seen the video. It's very clear there was an attack. A drone flew overhead and it dropped an incendiary device, set a fire into the ship, the boat. That fire was put out by the crew, with some difficulty. We don't know who did this, but the obvious suspect is the usual group of zealots in Israel who made threats to basically take anybody on those boats. Prisoner and incarcerate them under harsh conditions with no due process.

And so perhaps they reached out in advance to attack the boat, but we don't know who did it. I guess there's no end to this until Donald Trump tells Netanyahu to stop. Netanyahu announced via his lawyers this morning that he would not be present at his own criminal trial because six people were murdered on a bus in Jerusalem on Sunday. I don't want to again say that. The murders were horrible, but he has used that as a reason. I don't know if the court will accept it for not being present at his own and criminal. trial. On and on and on and on, this goes without an end, ambassador. The numbers that

Prime Minister Sanchez gave were way underestimated, but even if they were accurate, they're totally unacceptable. Yes, even if you accept those numbers for the sake of argument, it's remarkable that six people on a bus murdered outweigh 63,000 murdered right next door in Vaza in terms of how the media cover this. And of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu is transparently extending this war. It's not a war, this campaign of annihilation against the Palestinians in order to stay in office, and escaped prison and now apparently evade an appearance in court. Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much.

Thanks for letting me go all across the board here from Latin America to Gaza and just about every hot spot in between. Deeply appreciated. And we'll look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend. I wish we were not as scoff law as we have become. Well, you used a very interesting phrase, which I have occasionally used. in my writings, and that is we are a police state, which means that the laws are now being interpreted so as to favor governmental order rather than individual freedom.

And in parts of the United States of America, sadly, that is the case. It is the opposite of the rule of law, and it is incompatible with the genius of our republic. Yes, it is. the better. Somewhere James Madison is not happy. Yeah, and I think

Matternich is spinning in his grave as he watches these morons turn the entire world against the United States. Yes. Thank you, Ambassador. All the best to you, my friend.

Have a great day. You too. Thank you. We have a busy day coming up for you later today at 10 this morning, Professor Gilbert Doctoro at 11 this morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor at 1 o'clock this afternoon, our old pal Scott Horton, at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Max Blumenthal, at 3 o'clock this afternoon,

Lieutenant Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.