Judging Freedom - Anthony Blinken - what_s his role in Ukraine_ Phil Giraldi

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April, May, sorry, Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023. It's about 11 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Phil Giraldi joins us for his weekly session with us. Phil, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. Since last we spoke, a number of things have happened. Secretary of State Blinken, and his involvement with former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, using intelligence assets to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential campaign.

But before we get there, since you and I spoke last, the Washington Post has revealed that Jack Teixeira, the person the government claims is solely responsible for the release of national defense information about Ukraine, had in fact been releasing these documents since February of 2022, a year before we originally thought they were being released, going back to the original or to the commencement of military activity in Ukraine. How could these documents marked top secret containing NDI, national defense information, possibly have been out there in a chat room for a year before the government knew about it, unless the government didn't want to know about it? Yeah, that's probably the better way to phrase it. It's very suspicious, and one has to assume that at least some people in the government knew about it. And if some people in the government knew about it, then this takes on the flavor of some kind of

disinformation operation run by the United States government against the American people, in a matter of speaking, or it's something even more insidious, something that is intended to appeal to, shall we say, a foreign audience or an audience that we haven't really thought of yet. It's a very strange development. Are you of the view that given the sensitive nature of this information, for whom it was prepared, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it is extremely unlikely that Deshera could have acted on his own and that he probably is a dupe of someone significantly north of him on the totem pole? Or are you of the view that the government got their man? Well, I'm undecided on that. I think it could be a loner in this case that he was doing this

for reasons that were internally driven, shall we say. But on the other hand, it's beginning to look increasingly like there is a much bigger plot that's playing out here. And I would leave the door open to that. And I think last week I mentioned that I find it very mysterious that we've heard nothing about his defense. Isn't that a bit odd at this point? It is. It is very odd. There's no one making public statements for him. I honestly don't know who his lawyers are. I don't know if his lawyers are intelligence qualified, meaning if they're allowed to examine government secrets. You know, there's a category of lawyers. I actually only know of one in Boston who's a former FBI and NSA agent.

Maybe there are more whom the government will even deal with. I mean, you can't just go hire any lawyer you want in cases like this because the government will not share a classified material with them. It makes me think that he's a dupe, that his lawyers may be a dupe, that the government wants to lock him up and throw away the key because the same government that's prosecuting him wants to protect whoever it was that allowed him to get that information. I don't think he knows he was a dupe. I think he thinks that he is the revealer of this information. Yeah, I would agree with you. And when it comes to the lawyer, the only lawyer that's been identified that I've seen in the case is a public defender that was assigned to him on the first day. So we don't know what else is going on behind the scenes. And I just find it's

very uncharacteristic. We know nothing about what will be his defense, what is alleged to be his motive or anything like that. None of this stuff is coming out. It's very strange. Even in a significant city of Boston, which obviously has a federal court and a federal appellate court. I never heard of a public defender being intelligence government secret qualified. It's just not something public defenders do. Usually, the typical lawyer who meets that qualification is a person with a background in intelligence or high-end law enforcement like FBI himself, rather than a public defender who goes and takes a course and takes the test and satisfies the government that he's intelligence qualified, because it requires not the level of investigation that you had before you got your top secret security clearance,

but certainly a more thorough investigation than whatever they investigated Teixeira with before they gave him his security clearance. So it is a little mystifying. But I'm mystified that this stuff was out there that long. So let me ask you a technical question if I could. If Teixeira was putting this stuff in a chat room, and there are just 20 or 30 people in that chat room, would the government have known about that? Well, it depends to a certain extent if they had in any way suspicions about the chat room or the group. And it seems to me that by the nature of a chat room, you're going to have somebody putting

material there. And if other people find it exciting, they're going to be sharing it all over the place. So I have a feeling, this was probably at least a certain level known to the government. And they let it run for reasons best known that hopefully we'll someday find out about. This is one of the, you know, the intelligence cases that have gone on in the past, like John Kariakou and Sterling, Jeffrey Sterling, and so on and so forth. It's a procedure, as you were alluding to, in terms of the lawyers and how this thing plays out. And they usually crucify you by sending you to that court in Southern Virginia that always convicts. So that's the kind of game they play, but there's kind of a script. And we're not seeing that now. Let me mention to you the other group of people that have been silent on this,

and that's the neocons. I haven't heard a peep out of them trying to downplay or poo-poo the documents. I mean, here you have Victoria Nuland, the princess of the neocons, number three in the State Department. She of the 2014 coup in Ukraine. She of the first impeachment of Donald Trump over Ukraine. She now the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. She arguing that the Ukrainians should invade Crimea and the United States should militarily support the invasion. She's suddenly silent on these documents, the essence of which is the Ukraine air defenses have been degraded to nearly zero, and the United States top military command does not expect Ukraine to prevail. So where's she? Where's John Bolton? Where are the other neocons and Lindsey Graham and warmongers on this?

I haven't heard a peep out of them. I'm sorry my question is so long, Phil. I haven't heard a peep out of them since these documents were revealed and the government identified Teixeira as the source of the revelation. Well, of course, I mean, that in and of itself is suspicious. You have to consider that these people who are generally very valuable on any national security related issues to maintain their superiority as experts on the subject are suddenly quiet. And the fact that they're quiet indicates that there's another game being played somewhere you know down below and uh again are we gonna find what this is or is this all gonna be uh settled by never letting this guy really tell his story and uh and sending them all to a maximum security prison one of the ways the government does that of, is to grossly overcharge him, scare the daylights out of him that he's facing life in prison. Ah, but if you plead guilty to this and don't say anything and be a good boy, you'll get five years and you'll be out in three.

I mean, that's a standard way for the government to operate. And then there'll be no trial, no expert is going to testify on his behalf. The kid is not going to take the witness stand with reporters at bated breath wondering what he's going to say. Someone who has spoken lately is Christopher Cavoli. General Cavoli, as you know, is a four-star and is the commander-in-chief of American military forces in Europe. He told the House Armed Services Committee the opposite of what his boss, Secretary of Defense Austin, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. Secretary Austin said, we have a lot of faith in the Ukrainians. I'm expecting the spring offensive. Everybody's

waiting. And we're optimistic. That, of course, was defied by the documents. Here's what General Cavoli told the House of Representatives on Friday. I'd like to underline your comment about the specificity of the degradation of the Russian forces. Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict. Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict. Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict. One of those forces is their undersea forces. It's hard to talk in public, as you well know, sir, about undersea warfare and our efforts in that regard. But I can say that the Russians are more active than we've seen them in years. And this is, as you pointed out, despite all of the efforts that they're undertaking inside Ukraine. None of the Russian forces have been degraded by this conflict. Now,

that doesn't directly defy what his boss says. I guess General Cavoli's not quite ready to retire, but he's certainly a lot closer to your and my and the good people watching us now understanding Colonel McGregor, Scott Ritter, Tony Schaefer, Ray McGovern, our wonderful members of the Judging Freedom family. It's certainly closer to our understanding of things. Why is he saying this? You know, I don't know. Again, this is one of these mysteries. These people don't become four star generals by not knowing that they have politicians looking over their shoulders. So this is kind of a mystery comment to me. When I saw it, I said, my God, is there a senior officer in the in the United States military who's willing to speak the truth? We haven't had one of those in a while.

So it's I would assume that this is this coincides with a lot of the information that, as you say, people that we've been talking to have been surfacing. And it demonstrates to me that they've been there right on target. And reasons unknown why he surfaces at this time. One wonders if he was reb, and Mrs. Napolitano, my mother, told their boys, you always tell the truth no matter what, no matter if it hurts or not. I'm going to guess he had a similar upbringing to of the CIA, which culminated in a false and overt series of statements made in October 2020 intended to induce voters to vote for Joe Biden? Well, from those who know Morell, I've met him, I wouldn't claim to know him. He was always kind of seen as your consummate bureaucrat. If you look at his actual record of work, where he served, and that sort of thing. He didn't go to a lot of high-risk places. He spent a lot of time in Washington. When he finally was temporarily director of the CIA

under Obama, he was in favor of torturing suspects. He was in favor of the use of drones to assassinate people on the ground, even if you could not identify them or recognize that they posed any threat. He supported all these kinds of things, kind of a ruthless character and very ambitious. Now, he suddenly has resurfaced in that he appeared before a House Judiciary Committee, and he told us a story about how in October 2020, he was approached by Tony Blinken, who is now Secretary of State, but at the time was a plan to make the Hunter Biden laptop issue, which had at that point just surfaced in the news, look like a Russian disinformation operation, so that the information that the laptop contained and the implications of it would be dismissed. And that's indeed what happened. So he, at the request of Tony Blinken, formerly chief of staff to then-Senator Biden, formerly chief of staff to the Senate Armed Services Committee when Biden was its chair,

formerly senior person in the Biden campaign, as you point out, now Secretary of State. But at the request of Tony Blinken, Morell concocted a false letter saying, all this information you're hearing about the president's son's laptop has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation. We are serious, lifelong intelligence professionals. We're telling you don't believe it. It was signed by 50 or 51 people, none of whom was still in the CIA or none of whom was involved in American intelligence at the time. Is this something that former intelligence officials do, get involved in an open and notorious way, using their names, credentials, and experiences to sway voters in a public political campaign?

No, this is something that would be considered undoable. Basically, the trust in the intelligence profession and in the national security apparatus is based on an assumption that even if some things are secret, that basically these people will be playing square with you. And of course, this proves that that's not the case. He managed to get 50 people besides himself, not only CIA people, there were others in the national security structure, like Homeland Security, for example, Chertoff. And these people all signed onto this letter. And this letter basically kicked the ball down the road away from the biden family away from serious charges about joe biden having put pressure on the ukrainian government to give

his son a job at fifty thousand dollars a month uh you know so this is uh this is serious stuff and this was like two weeks before the election. And it could have had a serious impact, but instead they made it go away. And now I don't know what Morell's motivation was when speaking to the House committee to come clean on this story. I'm a little bit surprised because I figured he was a little more sneakier than that that was going to be my next question i mean why why did he spill the beans is it because he thought he was going to be appointed director of the cia by joe biden perhaps in return for this favor he did in the last two weeks of the campaign. It could have changed the outcome. Who the heck knows? That's unknowable. But obviously, he didn't get it. I think he works for CNN or MSNBC. The last time I saw him, he did. I don't know if he's still there or exactly

what he's doing, but I'm sure his dream job would have been to be the director yeah so he did you know he'd be let me put it this way he betrayed his country and the constitution of the united states which which he had sworn to uphold uh and but it came down to he didn't get a job that maybe annoyed him enough where he decided to spill the beans on this and and certainly as far as I'm concerned, Blinken is the guy that the FBI should be talking to right now, finding out what exactly this was all about. This was a conspiracy basically to undertake a criminal act in this case to disrupt the election using a lie which was fabricated for the purpose. I mean, this is incredible. And 51 people that were in the national security structure signed on to it.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin claims, I don't know if this was in a secret committee interrogation or whether we're discussing top secret matters or an open and public one, that Secretary Blinken, and he may not have been the secretary at the time, outright denied ever communicating with Hunter Biden. And now, of course, Mike Morell has released how he got them.

I don't know. Boy, Morell is some operator. You cross him and he'll chop you down. That's apparently what he's doing to Tony Blinken. Anyway, Senator Johnson says that Blinken lied under oath by denying having communicated with Hunter Biden. And according to Mike Morell, there are these emails there in which they communicated. It does seem to me odd that people this high ranking, Mike Chertoff, he and I started out together as lawyers in Newark, New Jersey, 45, 46 years ago. He went on to become a federal judge and the secretary of Homeland Security. Now he manufactures equipment that the feds buy from him by the truckload for all their

security needs. I believe Jack Brennan signed that letter as well, didn't he? Yeah. Former director, open public, notorious, combative director of the CIA in the Obama years. Did these guys destroy their reputations? Well, apparently not, because this is, again, the typical backstory, which is that the mainstream media has not picked up on this story. You and I are talking about it, and it's appeared in, Ron Paul has had some stuff on it, and it's appeared in a number of other places, but the mainstream media has decided this is not important, an attempt by national security people to alter the outcome of a national election. I mean, this is an incredible story. I'm just astonished by this. And, you know, I would think that there are probably, there probably is a trail of documents that Michael Morrell has access to, which may be a reason why he decided to spill

the beans. And of course, it's going to be an interesting kind of development to see if this goes anywhere with the Justice Department. I can't put my finger on it. How can we get rid of this type of deception, if ever, from present and former government officials? I mean, just think what we're talking about. We're talking about the government waging a war in Ukraine, 5,000 miles from the United States, that has not been declared by Congress. I'm lying about it. And the lies come out with secret documents being revealed, and the government just looks the other way and won't talk about it. And we're talking about the intelligence community, supposedly neutral, extraordinary power in our system, powers far beyond whatever Harry Truman could have imagined when he signed the National Security Act of 1947. They kill, they torture,

they have their own little army trying to influence the outcome of an election. These are two very, very, very significant issues in our day. The mindset that has produced these, is it forever embedded in the permanent state, the deep state, the national security state, whatever you want to call it, of America? Well, I think it's verging on that. I think the solution is to put some of these people in jail. And once you do that, the lesson will be there. And I think it will discourage the others from doing the same thing. Other countries do that. I mean, you know, politicians in other countries that do something egregiously wrong do wind up getting punished. But in the United States, we seem to have an aversion to doing that kind of thing. We put the people in jail who expose the crimes being committed by politicians and by government. And the ones who do it, get away with it. Our friend Ray McGovern was at a gathering, maybe you were there, I think it was a gathering by Zoom over the weekend honoring Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg, of course, as you know, the hero of the First Amendment, thanks to the Pentagon Papers cases, and the hero of exposing LBJ and

his military leaders lying in Vietnam. And his lesson was, don't do what I did. I waited too long. Don't wait until the bombs are dropped. If you know the government is about to kill, if you know the government is materially misleading the American public, reveal it as soon as you know it. But yet the only reason he lived a life of freedom after this is because the FBI broke into his psychiatrist's office. If they hadn't done that and have courageous and irate federal judge hadn't thrown the case out, he would have been convicted and gone away for 10 or 15 years and probably would have been dead by now. The only reason Bradley slash Chelsea Manning is free is because President Obama pardoned her.

He, it was a he at the time, was sentenced to 45 years in jail. Look at what Assange is going through. Look at where Snowden is. So they will destroy the heroic among us if it embarrasses them. Absolutely. And they've sent that message clearly.

Yes. It's unfortunate because the message should be going the other way. Bill Giraldi, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. If you like what you heard, my dear friends, and I suspect from all of your comments that you did, like and subscribe. You know more as we get it.

Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.