Judging Freedom - Biden Cheat Sheet_ Tucker is Back_ Trump & family court cases

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 27th, 2023. It's about five minutes after noon here on the East Coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics today, including the tweet of Tucker Carlson, about which I will happily comment, and a Ukrainian soldier selfie video, which is very disturbing, very distressing, and filled with F-bombs, which, of course, you'll be able to see from the subtitles. But before we get to those, late last night, former President Trump lost yet again another appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This is about his fourth or fifth effort to prevent the testimony of former Vice President Mike Pence before one of the grand juries investigating the president. This was two. One is Mar-a-Lago and one is January 6th. This is the grand jury involving January 6th. So to give you a little bit of background. The grand jury subpoenaed the former vice president. Before the former vice president

could do anything about the subpoena, the federal prosecutor in charge of this investigation, Jack Smith, filed a motion with the judge supervising the grand jury, ordering the vice president to comply with it. The vice president responded and said, I'm not going to comply. I've got executive privilege and I've got the speech and debate clause. Executive privilege means his comments to the president were privileged and he shouldn't have to reveal them. Speech and debate clause means because he was acting as the president of the Senate for part of the time that the prosecutors want to ask him about, he has the same protection as members of the Senate do, which is the speech and debate

clause. The speech and debate clause in the Constitution insulates, immunizes members of Congress, House and Senate from being called to account for what they do say and hear on the floor of the Senate or on the floor of the House. Okay. The executive privilege claim was thrown out for two reasons. One, it only applies to military, diplomatic, and sensitive national security matters of which former president's communications with former Vice President Trump were not among that, those categories. Two, the Vice President wrote a book about all of this and recounted his communications with President Trump between election day and January 6th in the book. So he already

waived that privilege. Okay. So the federal judge ruling on this said, you are protected for what you said, heard, and did on the floor of the Senate, but for nothing else. And the vast majority of what the feds want to ask him about are conversations in the White House between election day and January 6th. So Pence lost that. He then appealed it to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. At the same time, President Trump moved independently and on his own before the same judge to quash the subpoena on the same two grounds. The same federal judge ruled the same way. The Court of Appeals denied Mike Pence's Court of Appeals last night.

The Court of Appeals denied Donald Trump's appeal. will be testifying as to what he heard from the president, what his interactions were with the then president between election day and January 6th concerning efforts by then President Trump to prevent the passage of power because of Trump's stated belief that he actually won the election. And Pence will have to testify to that. The investigation of President Trump's involvement in January 6th, just like the investigation of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, is nearing an end, which means that Jack Smith, the special counsel in both cases, will soon be recommending to the Attorney General Merrick Garland whether or not the former president should be indicted. I think it's a no-brainer that they will seek his

indictment. I'm not saying he should be indicted, but knowing the federal prosecutorial mentality as I do, and knowing the expense that they poured into this, including 50 FBI agents running through his home, I don't think they would be going through all this unless they intend to indict him. While we're talking about indictments, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, that includes Atlanta, filed a motion to remove one of the lawyers from the case. This lawyer is representing 10 different defendants. In criminal cases, even in some civil cases, even if your interests are the same as others, you need your own lawyer. She will prevail in that motion. In the motion itself, in the papers, the application for it, she revealed that she expects to announce her decision about indictments in the Georgia case between July 11th and September 1st.

I don't know the significance of those dates on the Georgia docket, but that's when she expects to announce it. So she'll probably announce sometime in the second half of July or during the month of August, her decision about whether or not to seek an indictment. She won't announce an intention to seek an indictment. She'll either say, we're not indicting or we have already indicted and here's the indictment. That, of course, will provide quite a brouhaha during the summer. Now, talking about separate counsel, the attorney general of New York is suing Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as others for two hundred and fifty million dollars, which she says they unlawfully earned from the Trump organization because the Trump organization, the former president's umbrella corporation, he has 3,500 corporations. Some are single purpose corporations. You establish a corporation just to rent a piece of property. You establish a corporation to own temporarily a piece of property. You take possession and then you sell it. So you've got

thousands of those corporations, but the umbrella corporation that controls all of them is called the Trump Organization. The Trump Organization, which was convicted of income tax evasion by a jury in New York earlier this year, employed Ivanka, Donald Jr., the former president, and Eric. According to the complaint filed by the Attorney General of New York, they engaged in tax fraud while she proved that the corporation did. The jury found the corporation guilty. Mail fraud, wire fraud, insurance fraud, bank fraud, essentially by misleading lenders and insurers and taxing authorities and sending that misleading information digitally, which is what makes it wire fraud or alleged wire fraud, and enriched themselves as a result of all that misinformation, saying that they were wealthier than they did, claiming that buildings were worth more than they were worth, except for the taxing authorities claiming they were poorer than they were and claiming that the buildings were worth far less than they're truly worth. Okay, you get the picture. Last night or yesterday afternoon, Ivanka Trump fired the lawyers that had been representing all the Trumps

and hired her own. Does that mean that she is going to go after her father and her two brothers? No, it doesn't. But it does mean she's being very smart and very prudent. Because if there is a gaggle of people in a criminal, or as in this case, a civil case, you need your own lawyer. You need someone who is loyal just to you. You need someone who is going to keep confidential what you tell that lawyer and not share it with everybody else. If the case goes to trial and the case is a conspiracy, you really want separate lawyers to show that you have separate interests and separate involvement in all of this. You don't want to be dragged down because your brothers or your father is being dragged down. It doesn't mean you're going to point fingers at them,

but it means you're going to stand alone. I think she did the smart thing, even though in the New York Press, New York P papers this morning, and the media around here, she is being severely criticized. This next one will come as no surprise to any of you because we've seen it before. President Biden and his cheat sheets. Now, we all know that the president, there's an example of the cheat sheet from yesterday, April 26th. Look at that, reporter Q&A. He supposedly is holding a press conference, a spontaneous unrehearsed press conference. Now we know that his office has designated who he's going to call on, given him the name and photograph of that person, told him where she works, told him the subject matter of the question, told him what the question is

going to be, and scoped out the answer for him. Man, it is one thing to give him names and photographs, because sometimes you don't know the names of the reporters, and it's a little warmer, if you can say Peter Doocy from Fox News, for example. but to inform him ahead of time of what the question is and to rehearse the answer only feeds into the argument. You'll agree with me whether you like him or not. It feeds into the argument that he is not mentally competent to be president of the United States. Gary, can we see that one more time? I mean, take a look at this thing. I know some of you are listening to this on audio only, but most of you are watching it on YouTube or Facebook or wherever you see these things. Look at that, her picture, her name, where she works, what the question is going to be,

and what his answer should be. I mean, this is humiliating that the president of the United States is doing it. And as I said, it feeds the narrative that he's mentally incompetent for the job. How he's going to have a debate against Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or whoever the Republican nominee is going to be is beyond me if he needs a cheat sheet for a press conference. Donald Trump, of course, was famously the other way around. He would basically say, come at me, ask me anything you want. I mean, some of those pressers went on for, I remember one went on for two hours early in his presidency. I thought, wow, is this what we're in for for the next four years? This is long,

at times tedious, mainly entertaining, but fearless. That's the way press conferences should be. Not necessarily two hours long, but certainly spontaneous. My friend and former colleague Tucker Carlson last night addressed war, civil liberties, demographic change, corporate power, and natural resources. I agree with much of what he said. We're going to play it for you in a minute. I honestly don't know why he was fired from Fox. I don't know if it was the tasteless internal emails and tweets or if there was some other reason and I don't know the circumstances under which he was fired. You know, he had a

contract with Fox and it goes for another three years and it was making 20 million a year. God bless him. Did they fire him for cause in which case they're not going to pay him anything? Did they fire him just because they don't want him on air in which case they owe him going to pay him anything? Did they fire him just because they don't want him on air, in which case they owe him the $60 million? Are they going to pay him that $60 million up front, in which case as soon as he cashes the check, he's free as a bird to go wherever he wants? Or are they going to pay him that $60 million over three years, in which case the contract is binding? And as long as he accepts the money under the contract, he's bound by the terms of it,

which means he can't go on another venue, even something like Facebook or YouTube. So all of that remains to be seen. I know a lot of you are also Tucker Carlson fans, we'll wait and see where he ends up. But here's what he said last night. One of the first things you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country. Kind and decent people, people who really care about what's true. And a bunch of hilarious people also. A lot of those. It's got to be the majority of the population, even now. So that's heartening. The other thing you notice when you

take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They're completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won't even remember that we had them. Trust me, as someone who's participated. And yet at the same time, and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?

It's been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That's a depressing realization, but it's not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won't last. They're brain dead.

Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone's life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won't. The people in charge know this. That's why they're hysterical and aggressive. They're afraid. They've given up persuasion.

They're resorting to force. But it won't work. When honest people say what's true calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who've been trying to silence them shrink and they become weaker. That's the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon. Well, I hope we do see him soon. I agree with nearly everything that he said. And the essence of it is the government is run by one big government party, the war party. Each side wants to grow the government. The Republicans last night voted

to raise the debt ceiling by a trillion and a half. I mean, that's peanuts compared to what the Democrats want to, but that's the same big government growing, borrowing, spending, borrowing, spending over and over and over again. The $113 billion, the $113 billion slush fund that Joe Biden has to spend however he wants on Ukraine is actually three different votes in the Congress. And the majority of Republicans and the majority of Democrats voted for it. They all want war. They all want big government. They're all in favor of the banks bailing people out. The government spent $300 billion to bail out that

bank, Silicon Valley Bank. The government now is spending $113 billion to bail out Ukraine. I'm not in favor of welfare, but the government is. The government is cutting back on Medicare and Medicaid and other types of wealth transfers so that it can bail out the banksters, the crooks that run the banks, and so that it can bail out the crooks in Ukraine. These are arguments that Tucker Carlson has been making. Again, I tell you, I honestly don't know why he's been silenced, and I don't know the terms of the silence. I don't know if he's going to be back next week or if we won't hear from him for another three years. But the big government party with its Democrat wing and its Republican wing, the Democrat wing wants war and individual welfare and higher taxes. The Republican wing wants war and corporate welfare and more borrowing,

which produces higher taxes. They both want to stay in power. Their differences are just cosmetic. And this is the government that we have today. These are the powers that run the government today. And until true iconoclasts, libertarians, even progressives where they agree with libertarians, shake the government to its roots, reduce the government down to the confines that the Constitution has for it, chains the government down only to those powers that the Constitution authorizes. Until that happens, the government will get bigger, taxes will get higher, regulations will get stronger, and freedom will shrink. We have another tape which is a little crude and a little disgusting. It is a selfie taken by a Ukrainian soldier in the moments of desperation.

You'll see it. There are subtitles. I can't read the subtitles aloud for those of you that are just listening to this because there are more F-bombs in there than there are plain English words. Now, again, the voices in Ukrainian, the subtitles lay out what he's saying. The essence of what he's saying is, are you crazy? We are here about to die. We do not have the equipment, the ammunition, the manpower to get us out of here we don't have the fuel for the cars for the one car that we have how can you possibly expect us to be in this situation so here we go you'll hear it and you'll see what it says underneath take take a watch and carefully watch his words Посмотрите на его слова. Потому что техники нету. Техники нету нихуя, ребят. Где она, блядь, девается, блядь? Где она все девается? У нас пацаны дохнут.

Дохнут. Мы их выносим, мы их, сука, ночью несем, блядь. По болоту вот так, сука. Ну не вот так, но в колено, пиздю. В колено, болото вот так. Ночью несем 5-6 километров, блядь. Меняется 5 раз точек, сука, чтобы нас не высекли. Потому что у нас одна единственная машина.

Не дай бог, сука, у нее гусеницу забьют или еще куда-то попадут, блядь. Вы охуели нахуй, ребята. Вы охуели. Давайте своих сыновей к нам сука в окопы хай сука потерпят там 3-4 дня блять когда они манерудий не орудий противотанковых рпг противотанковый не работает одноразки тоже не работают противотанковые джавелина у нас нету нихуя блять окей not an actor, a real Ukrainian soldier. There are no trucks. There is no ammunition.

There is no food. There is no fuel. There is no medicine. What the blank do you expect us to do? There isn't even, my phrase, an off-ramp. His phrase, evacuation. I realize that was a little difficult to watch. And again, if you're listening

to this on Omni or one of the other audio-only sites, it didn't make any sense to you. But if you're watching, you can see his desperation. More on this later today when Larry Johnson joins us at 2.30 Eastern, and Scott Ritter joins us at 3.30 Eastern. Here's the question. Whatever happened to the Ukrainian spring offensive? I think we already know the answer from that grunt, that soldier. I wonder if he's still alive. More as we get it. See you this afternoon.

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