Judging Freedom - Capt. Matt Hoh : Can the Pentagon Survive Hegseth?

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Capt. Matt Hoh : Can the Pentagon Survive Hegseth?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 20th, 2006. Matt Ho will be with us in just a moment on this intriguing question. Can the Pentagon survive Pete Hegsef? But first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 38 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up and this dollar, it buys less every day. When the system breaks, your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either. But one thing will, gold. I've set it on my show for years. Gold survives collapse. Central bankers know this and billionaires know it. That's why they're

buying more. Is it too late to buy or is it just the right time? Call my friends at Lear Capital to find out. Get the free information. There's no pressure, and that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now, you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Matt Howe, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you very much for joining us. before we get to the Pentagon and the person who calls himself the Secretary of War, I have been intrigued with the collapse of the MI6 CIA Mossad plans to cause chaos in Iran. Do these plans call for the killings of innocent civilians?

And would Trump have authorized when he signed some finding for the CIA, them to do this? Hi, Judge. Thanks for having me on. You know, whether or not Donald Trump knows the particulars of what these types of regime change operations entail, you know, as a matter of speculation. We don't even know. This is a man who, you know, we're dealing with someone who doesn't have a friend. grasp of reality as you and I and everyone else sees it. So, you know, whether he understands what's put in front of him is a whole other other story. But certainly this plan by, as you correctly pointed out,

CIA, MI6 and Mossad to utilize legitimate grievances, legitimate unrest, of problems in Iran, many of which are the results of other American Israeli and British actions, chiefly the sanctions that have impoverished and hollowed out and weakened the country, it miserated the population. The CIA, MI6, and Assad tried in the last weeks to utilize that, you know, that unrest, that instability, that impoverishment to their advantage. And in particularly, it seems as if they try to do so utilizing Kurdish minorities. It seems that much of the violence came out of the Kurdish regions that a lot of the pitched battles that occur between security forces and protesters, rioters, insurgents, foreign agents,

however they can be described, seems to have been in the Kurdish areas. And this is something when we look back on is not surprising. the relationship between the Kurds and the Americans, the Kurds and the Israelis, the Kurds and the British is long. As far as I know, the first time the United States started sending weapons to the Kurds was back in 1973, Kissinger and Nixon. But even when I was in Iraq, say in 2004, 2005, I'd go up to the Kurdish areas. You go to Sulamanea, which is a city in northeastern Iraq in the Kurdish region of Iraq. And this is a brand new airport there. And you say to them, how did you all build this airport?

You are under, you know, you're under all this pressure under siege from the Iraqi government. You know, you have been waged war against by the Iraqi government. You had some protection from the Americans and internationals. But how did you actually build this brand new airport? And they said the Israelis built it for us. You know, it was 20 some odd years ago. And this idea of utilizing the Kurds for American and Israeli purposes. And we've seen that play out in these last few weeks in Iran.

where it seems to me as if the main effort here was the Kurds, was to try and provoke some type of Syria-like civil war. The idea to get these factions. If there is a CIA or MI6 or Mossade agent on the street, I understand that these are mainly assets on the street, not agents. However, we have that, Chris, you have that full screen from Pompeo. I don't know if you've seen this. He is, of course, the former director of the CIA and the former Secretary of State.

We only need to read the bottom line, Matt. Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets, also to every Mossade agent walking beside them. Now, does he mean that literally that there were Mossad agents and therefore MI6 and CIA on the street? And if they were, and they see an innocent old man being beaten it down. by a mob, wouldn't they have the legal and moral obligation to stop it? No, Judge, they wouldn't. These are men and women who are beholden to nothing but their own masters at their intelligence headquarters, their own sense of righteousness, their own belief in their

own James Bond-esque vulnerabilities, including to immorality, to law, to ethics, etc. the, you know, the idea of these agents on the ground there, it's not going to be the men and women who work at CIA headquarters, MI6 headquarters, Mossade headquarters, people who are Israeli, British Americans. These are Iranians, whether they are Kurds or Balukes or Persians or Turks or Sunni, you know, Arab Iranians, you know, it'll be a, blend, but these are agents that are utilized by the intelligence services to carry out their bidding. And to your point that I didn't get to about whether or not they would directly kill innocent civilians, absolutely. That's all to stoke the outrage, to provide the context,

to give the causes belly for an American intervention in Iran. I mean, it seems as this has been long, long, long, long planned for. You know, this is obviously the culmination of efforts that began months and months ago, maybe even a year ago with Netanyahu's first visit to Iran, but certainly the cast of characters, and this is broad. If you looked at that, if you saw a judge that text message that President Trump leaked, that Imam Macron, the French president sent him, And he said we could, you know, Macron says to Trump just yesterday or today, we could do great things in Iran. You know, I mean, the reality of the Iranian economy crashing like it did at the end of December has very much to do with the British, the French, and the Germans putting those snapback sanctions onto the Iranians back in the fall. These were draconian things since that did exactly what everyone expected those sanctions to do.

crush the Iranian economy, do you value the Iranian currency to nothing, to Varamar Republic level meaningless? And that, of course, then engendered the public unrest that enabled the CIA and Maasad and MI6 to put into operation their regime change. And I think what happens this past week, part of that regime change operation was to have been American strikes to decapit take Iranian leadership, military, security, political, religious. But what occurred was that the Iranian government was resilient enough, the Iranian people resilient enough to realize what was occurring, still unhappy about the reality of their lives, you know, still unhappy about the miseration, the poverty, the suffering that they're enduring under these sanctions as well as, too.

You know, I mean, let's not forget that the Iranian government judge is a government that classifies people as enemies of God. You know, I mean, so I think most of us would agree. I am, I am, I'm not, doesn't need to exist, you know. I'm not surprised at Mossad killing people. We know the mentality. We know what the IDF does. But if the CIA kills an innocent civilian without a presidential finding or authorization,

that person could be prosecuted for murder 10 or 20 years from now by a federal. prosecutor who doesn't approve of what the CIA does, right? Right. The government is prosecuting Maduro for possessing a weapon in Caracas that was legal in Caracas, but illegal if he possessed it in Manhattan, even though he never possessed it in Manhattan. You can certainly prosecute a CIA agent for murdering somebody in Tehran. Right, but they know that will never happen, right? They know that will never happen.

Bloody Gina Haspel became director of the CIA after she ran torture sites. for the CIA. The CIA operates under an impunity that would make J.D. Vance, with all his declarations of impunity for federal agents that murder American citizens blush. The impunity the CIA has is not just one based upon its own power, the fact that it is its own kingdom within the United States. It does as it wishes. But there's also a cultural impunity, a belief in the United States that the CIA is this James Bond-like apparatus. It's this Tom Clancy like affair. And, you know, kudos the CIA for building that reputation for creating that cultural imprint on Americans to allow them to have that impunity. So they operate on their own, again, as a kingdom of itself within the United States.

It has this cultural impunity because the American people believe the lies about the CIA, the propaganda about the CIA that Hollywood produces. And then if anyone wants to get out of of line, the CIA has ways to punish them. Look, they brought down David Petraeus when he tried to, when he tried to bring his own version of his leadership to put it politely into the CIA. The CIA brought him down. They exposed that he was trading top secret information with his lover. You know, I mean, so there is this ability of CIA to also, when it needs to carry out punitive or vengeful or retaliatory actions to keep the federal government, to keep elected leaders, to keep overseers in line. Let's not forget the CIA broke into, hacked into the Senate's

computers, and nothing ever happened. It's recall what Chuck Schumer said about Donald Trump in Trump's first administration, where Trump, where Schumer said something along the lines of, you know, why is Trump taking on the CIA? They can get you. six ways from Sunday. You know, I mean, so this is how Schumer's right. Yeah. Right. And this is why the CIA should be abolished. Yeah. You know, so

I was listening to a recently retired FBI agent basically saying the FBI in Minneapolis are furious. They know they should

be investigating Jonathan Ross for killing Rachel Good. They have been stopped. They know they should not be investigating the governor and the mayor for their public speeches. They're being forced to do that. Does anybody have qualms? Does anybody say, no, I won't do this? Do troops say, I'm not going to kill two guys floating on the remains of a boat hanging on for dear life? I'm just not going to deliver this missile to them? Or do people just do what they're told,

morality and law notwithstanding? I think many do, Judge. That's the sorted and terrible reality of human nature that many of us will do as we are asked to do, as we're ordered to do, as we're told to do, for a multitude of reasons, because we're stupid, because we're greedy, because we're fearful, You know, I take heart in those who are standing up, though, because that's not everyone.

ICE represents the very worst of us. ICE represents the thugs, the brutes, the hooligans in our society. They are the worst of us. And then you have those like Renee Good and her widow who represent the best of us. And this is a defining time in American history. This is a time for all of us as Americans to determine which, side of that line do we stand upon? If I could just give two quotes, Judge, because yesterday was MLK Day, Martin Luther King Day, you know, and Martin Luther King is beyond Vietnam speech,

which I would encourage people to go and listen to again because as a title of Beyond Vietnam says, it goes beyond Vietnam. It's just not his denunciation of the Vietnam War. Everything he is talking about that expands beyond that war. We are living that today. But as Dr. King said, these are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. And then yesterday we had a bishop from the Episcopal Church up in New Hampshire, a bishop by the name of Robert Hirschfield, who said this, Judge, now is no longer the time for statements but for us with our body,

is to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable. And I don't think any of this is hyperbole. I don't think there is azuration. When we have massed federal agents murdering American citizens in cold blood with at least six videos of the murder happening, of that execution happening, and are government doing nothing, actually doing worse than nothing, right? Rather than investigating the murderer, they are investigating the woman who was murdered. You know, if this is not this time as we are being, as we can see in terms of a historical lens, then I don't know what is.

As a 52-year-old American, I know that we've never been in this position for in my lifetime. I did not plan on discussing ice with you, but we've gotten there. So Chris just sent me a statement, but, Chris, do we have this order? I won't read it. We'll listen to him. So this is the police chief of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Watch what he has to say about these thugs. This is a cop. Watch what he has to say about these thugs in the streets. We, as law enforcement community, have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens. What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty.

Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them. In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer that shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ice going down the roadway. When they boxed her in, they demanded her paperwork of which she's a U.S. citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone. In an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands, prevented her from recording it. The officer had their guns drawn during this interaction, and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and de-escalating the incident down. The agents then immediately left after hearing this,

making no other comments, no other apologies, just got on their vehicles and left. I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty police officers, But what it did do is we know that our officers know what the Constitution is. They know what right and wrong is and they know when people are being targeted. And that's what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop.

Chris, I want you to see if you can find that chief and invite him onto the show. So, Matt, this is a terrible, terrible state of affairs. I know we started talking about Hegsef and the Pentagon and then we got into the streets of Tehran, but this is a terrible state of affairs that we are confronting here. I don't remember anything like this in my lifetime. This is worse than the Vietnam War era where most of the demonstrations were over the unjust nature of the war and the unjust nature of the draft. when Hegg Seth gave that talk to all the generals,

and he had a George C. Scott slash George Patton-like mammoth American flag behind him, and he was carrying on and on and on. Do you think they sort of smirked and whispered to each other, this guy's an asshole if he really thinks we're going to put up with this? I think there is a lot of that, Judge. I think there was a lot of looking at how much time they had left in their service, realizing if they stay another two years in service and make it to 28 years or 30 years or 32 years, that's another $500 in retirement pay for them. That's a calculation that occurs very much at senior levels of the U.S. military. That's how they keep these guys in in many ways.

the cowardice that was on display following, before, during, and following that Trump-Hegseth performance in Quantico back in the fall, should tell us everything we need to know about the U.S. military, that any of people who are holding on to this fantasy, that the generals and the admirals are going to save us, that the commanding general of the 11th Airborne division in Alaska is not going to deploy his soldiers to Minnesota against American citizens. I don't know what to tell you. I think we're all holding our hopes up that this Admiral Holsey, who resigned from Southern Command back in the fall, seemingly in disagreement with Trump and Hague Seth and the national security establishment over the murder of people on boats

in the Caribbean in the Pacific, his retirement came and went. And where is he? You know, I mean, and that's the best we've had so far. The reason why that we know the names of whistleblowers, why we celebrate them is because they're so infrequent. The fact that you have men like Larry Wilkerson or Doug McGregor, former Army colonels, and we all know them, that is because they're not drowned out by others, because they are unique, because they're general specific.

The same reason why we have lieutenant colonels like Karen Kiyotowski or Bill Astori who speak out, or former retired FBI agents like Koli and Rale is because they are so unique. And so I think this is, again, this point in history that we're here right now, this very historical moment. That, again, it's not hyperbole exaggeration to say we've not seen anything like it. And we know that maybe there will be a few Americans that will stand up who are in uniform. There will be a few police chiefs like that gentleman from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. God bless him.

You know, there will be a few military officers who say, I'm not taking part of this. There will be those like the head of the Catholic Diocese for the U.S. military who just spoke out and said that American soldiers should not follow legal orders, making sure that is understood. You know, but they're going to be a few and far between. Yeah. I think that's what we have to realize here. You, I, our colleagues on these programs, all the good people. listening, I think we have to realize the place that we're at right now, this historical moment, and realize that no one else is going to stand up unless we do so first.

Thank you, Matt. And thank you for letting me take you in my comments and questions all across the board here. I didn't know about this Brooklyn Park police chief. There's a phenomenon in law now called the capital. Kavanaugh stop. Now, if you're not a law student or a judge or a person who really gets into the granular parts of the law, you might not know what the hell that is, and I wouldn't blame you. When the Supreme Court refused to get involved in one of the cases stopping ICE, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion. The Supreme Court just didn't give an opinion. It just didn't give an opinion. just said, we're not interfering. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion. And in that concurring opinion, he said,

oh, come on, if you get stopped, big deal, just show your papers, you'll be gone in a couple of minutes. Well, that's not the law of the land, even though a Supreme Court justice wrote it. And this is not East Germany in the 1970s, where the police can stop you for no reason and demand your papers. And, oh, don't worry about it,

you'll be gone in a few minutes. We know what is happening in Minneapolis, and if we don't stop it, it's going to spread everywhere. Just stupid, dumb, unconstitutional, thoughtless, lawless comment has been picked up by these thugs, and they have run with that ball. Right, Judge. And the aspect of these men and women who popular ICE

and these other federal law enforcement agencies, the most dangerous thing about them are not that they're thugs, not that they're brutes, not that they are nothing more than common criminals themselves, but the fact that they have no principles, they have no ethics. You know, you heard that police chief state how after his police office have been stopped and identified himself, the ICE agents didn't even apologize. And you hear that over and over again. I just read the story this morning about American citizen who,

was detained, taken from his home in his underwear out into the freezing weather of Minnesota, taken for hours. And then when they finally realized, listened to him and realized that he was an American citizen, they did bring him home, but they didn't apologize. They didn't say anything. These men and women don't even have the decency, the ethics, the morals, uh, to conduct themselves in any type of manner that I think would, that we would describe as decent. And then, they're of course led by sadists and nihilists at the top level. And I'm reminded of a quote from Albert Camus that who described this type of danger of when the sky is empty, power resides in the hands of those without principle. This idea that when we don't have principles, when we have no

ethics, when there is no religion, that this is where we go to, this is where we as a people, as a human race go to, that tyranny, brutality, oppression comes hand in hand without principles. And that's what we're seeing in Minnesota. That's what we're seeing, you know, throughout the Muslim world that we've been bombing for decades. That's what the Europeans are now dealing with with the United States about to take Greenland from them, you know, so on and so forth. Thank you, Matt. As articulate and personally courageous as always, all the best of you, my dear friend. Thanks, Judge.

Sure. Coming up on more of this, her name has been mentioned a couple of times because she shares the intellectual honesty of the other guests on this show at 3 o'clock Colonel Karen Kutkowski, an exasperated Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.