Judging Freedom - How Bad is the CIA influence in American culture with Jacobn Hornberger

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

Judge Napolitano talks to Jacob Hornberger about how CIA treachery and criminality has hardened the hearts of good Americans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hello there, everyone, and welcome to Judging Freedom. Judge Andrew Napolitano here. This is a brand new podcast for me and one in which I truly get to Judging Freedom. Judge Andrew Napolitano here. This is a brand new podcast for me and one in which I truly get to speak my mind with people like you and guests that

generally agree with me or may disagree with me. Today, I have a dear friend and in some respects, even a mentor, Jacob Hornberger. Jacob is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas Law School. He was a very fine and much in demand trial lawyer in the Dallas, Texas area. When, like a lot of lawyers, he got tired of the legal profession and he founded the Future Freedom Foundation. So he is its founder and chief executive officer. And he joins me now. Jacob, it's always a pleasure. Welcome to Judging Freedom. Hey, it's great to be here. It's an honor and a pleasure, Judge. Jacob, it's always a pleasure. Welcome to Judging

Freedom. Hey, it's great to be here. It's an honor and a pleasure, Judge, to be with you. Thank you. So I want to talk to you about two topics that are very hot right now. The first of those is January 6th at the Capitol Building with a specific emphasis on the government's role. What did the government know and what did it not know? You and I are familiar with a lot of the investigative reporting. The colleagues of ours, even colleagues of ours whose ideologies are profoundly at odds with ours, have produced some startling information. And the second topic I want to discuss with you has to do with your views and mine, though recently and wonderfully crystallized by you, on the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in hardening the consciences of America. Now, that is a tantalizing subject, but let's

just hold it for a few minutes until we discuss January 6th. What, in your view, with all of the research that you have been doing, probably more than I, has been the role of the government in January 6th, particularly the FBI? Well, at this point, it's impossible to say exactly what that role is. But what shocks me is the revelation that the FBI had informants within at least one of the groups there and maybe more when people were suggesting that possibility that the other side was saying, oh, this is a conspiracy theory and so forth. And all of a sudden, the New York Times comes out and reports that's exactly what the case was. Now, so the question obviously arises, what were those informants doing? And the reason that this is so critically important

is that, as you'll recall, during the war on terrorism, there were countless instances of where the FBI was actually creating crimes on hapless Muslim guys, and they were creating the crimes, they were financing the crimes, they were providing the vehicles, the ideas, the encouragement. And so given that, and then, of course, they would play it up to the media as to how they had busted this terrorist cell. Well, given that, I think it's incumbent that there be a fierce investigation into the role that these informants played.

Did they encourage people to go on into the Capitol? Were they inciting them to do so? That still remains to be seen, but I don't think it's something that should be swept under the carpet. So the piece in the New York Times to which you refer, about which you and I have both commented publicly, reports that a bona fide legitimate member of the Proud Boys, an organization that the federal prosecutors are trying to charge with the conspiracy to disrupt or take over the government. They want to charge the

group with sedition, something that hasn't happened since 1917. A trusted member of the Proud Boys was also a trusted informant of the FBI. And while the Proud Boys were having meetings before January 6th with this fellow in the meetings, he was communicating in real time to the FBI. And again, according to the Times, and the Times claims that it has another person, they don't say who, my guess is it's somebody in law enforcement, to corroborate what this fellow told the FBI. According to the Times, this fellow told the FBI well before January 6th what was going to happen, and he told them that there were no plans for violence whatsoever, that the Proud Boys, for whatever reason, believed that Donald Trump, in fact, had been re-elected, that Joe Biden had

not been re-elected, and they were just going to go to the Capitol building to express that opinion. Now if the FBI was of that belief, did the FBI do something or did it look the other way when something happened to turn what was planned to be a peaceful demonstration into a violent one. Second aspect of this, and I have three as I see it, Jake, the second aspect of this is that this fellow was texting the FBI in real time about the violence that was happening, not by the Proud Boys, but that he was observing real-time violence. And to whomever he was sending these texts, that person did nothing. Now, we know from Department of Justice procedures, the FBI cannot hire and pay for

an informant without approval of FBI management. So we know that FBI management was aware of this guy, a trusted member of the Proud Boys and a trusted informant for the FBI. Here's the third observation that I have. This guy was in the middle of a group that the FBI and federal prosecutors say was committing crimes and he was reporting what the group was doing and they did all this without a search warrant. Now, if the government has a witness before, during, and after the crime and at the scene of the crime, and the witness's version of what he saw is different from what the government is telling federal judges, the government has a profound moral, ethical, legal, and constitutional duty to reveal the existence

and identity of that informant, and they have not done so. Take it from there. Well, all those are extremely valid points. Listening to what you're saying, it also caused me to wonder whether the FBI knew that there was a good chance this thing was going to get out of hand. And if they did, why didn't they immediately fortify the Capitol with a lot more people? Because you and I both know that when you've got an overwhelming police force, it really does discourage protesters that are tempted to get out of hand. Right. It also discourages legitimate protesters, by the way, from expressing their opinion. It chills their First Amendment rights. But the question is, why did the FBI do nothing? That's right. And if you have a minimal force

there, I mean, let's face it, protests get out of hand often. It's not an unusual occurrence. And when you have a minimal force there and somebody starts to barge into the building, everybody else gets riled up. And so if this guy was texting in real time as to what was going on, or even in advance of having left there and was saying, hey, this thing looks like it might get out of hand. We have to really look into the FBI's conduct here because you and I both know these law enforcement agencies, they benefit from crises. The bigger the crisis, the more they're going to get big budgets and big publicity and big help. And we saw that with the Waco massacre,

with Ruby Ridge and so forth. So I think there's a lot of aspects here that involve government, possible government misconduct that need to be investigated on top of all the other investigations they're doing to the protesters. Is there any evidence of which you are aware to support the views that the FBI actually fomented the violence, either because they hated Donald Trump or because they really thought that he was elected president and the constitutional procedure ought to be interfered with? Well, I don't think there's any question that the FBI and the national security establishment were fiercely opposed to President Trump. I mean, if you had to ask them and they were forced to respond,

they would have undoubtedly, maybe even unanimously said, we favor Joe Biden. That doesn't necessarily mean that that would be translated into a support for violence. I think that's where the investigation has to center around these informants and not just by asking the informant, obviously, but by asking the people around him. What was he saying to you? What was he? Was he inciting you? Was he encouraging you to go into the Capitol? That's where the investigation has to revolve around. So I'm beginning to wonder if the FBI has even told the federal prosecutors about this informant, because if they have, then the prosecutors, as we all know, have an ethical and legal duty to inform defense counsel. Now, the New York Times piece, which is the basis for our conversation, is only about 10 or 12 days old. And as far as I know, this informant has not been identified.

The informant probably fears for his life. He may still be a high-ranking member of the Proud Boys, and he may be participating in meetings of the Proud Boys, and the other Proud Boys don't even know who he is. But even though the Times promised him anonymity and promised the corroborator, who, as I told you, I think just from the language that the corroborator used is probably in law enforcement, maybe an FBI agent, I don't know. But the prosecutors, if they know about these two people, are going to have to inform defense counsel because the defendants are entitled to interrogate this paid informant about what the FBI told him and what he, more importantly,

what he told them. I think it's clearly potentially exculpatory evidence, which they're required to turn over to the defense, especially if the defense is contemplating an entrapment defense. Right, right. You spoke earlier, and I've written about this, and you and I are on the same page, and I suspect a lot of people listening to us now are as well, Jake, about so many of these so-called lone wolves, usually loner, disenchanted, young Arab American males in their early 20s whom the FBI persuaded to do what they thought was a crime. And the FBI provides all the material for it, even to the point of the fake bomb. And then the guy goes to deliver the fake bomb. And it turns out all of his buddies that were helping him to do this arrest him because they're FBI agents. The public was

never in trouble. The government and the public were never harmed. No one was ever harmed. These guys go away for 20 years. It's a totally government concocted crime. And the FBI gets the credit for it and then they demand more money in their budgets from Congress. This is a standard operating procedure. Is it probable that something like this happened on January 6th? I think that's what needs to be looked into. I mean, if you didn't have this history of the FBI doing this, you might say, oh, well, they have informants. They're trying to take precautions against violence and so forth. But the fact that the FBI has this history of concocting these crimes and encouraging the crimes in order to promote themselves to the

media and to the American people, that means you have to look into something like this. It's incumbent on an investigation to be taking place here. You know, I blame a lot of this on the Supreme Court and its entrapment jurisprudence, which basically says that the only way it's entrapment is if the FBI planted the seed from the beginning, if the defendant had no predilection toward the criminal behavior. So the FBI is familiar with these cases. So they'll have conversations in a mosque or a bar or a street corner or a playground or a restaurant or wherever they're going to meet the person they're going to try and talk into a crime and get them to express a lot of anti-government opinions before they even start supplying him with material for the crime so that they can overcome that obstacle in a Chief Justice Rehnquist opinion, the name of which is now escaping me, which says it is only entrapment if they planted the seed for the crime.

But if the defendant had the slightest inclination toward committing the crime, then the FBI can provide all the material it wants and it's not entrapment. That's very, very bad law because it encourages the FBI to further these crimes and it's an utter waste of taxpayer dollars. Look at the plot to, so-called plot, to kidnap the governor of Michigan. One of the FBI agents is on tape threatening everybody else. If you guys don't go forward with this, I'm out of here. And none of your bills are going to be paid. Yeah, it's horrific. I mean, you're right.

Even though it's legal from the standpoint of how the Supreme Court has ruled on entrapment cases, it's absolutely morally despicable for government to be doing this to citizens or to people in general. That's not what government's for. Government really is to arrest people that are actually committing crimes, not encouraging them and facilitating their commission of a crime. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. You and I have always been on the same page about the dangers of the national security state, but no one has done more research and produced more material and articulated it with more clarity than you, no one I know of, on this particular topic. Now, there's so much here to talk about. We could go back to 1947 and Harry Truman, and we could go to Dwight Eisenhower and all those awful things that presidents permitted taxpayer money to be spent on while they looked

the other way in the early days of the CIA. But what I want to talk to you about is a piece you published recently about the CIA and American conscience, you argue in that piece that we have become so acclimated to the stealing, lying, cheating, torturing, and murders perpetrated by the CIA that it no longer startles us. And when we learn about it, it's a ho-hum. Have I fairly summarized the thesis of your piece? Absolutely. All right. Take the ball and run with it and give us the evidence for this. Yeah. I mean, you know, the CIA used to conduct its state sponsored assassinations in secret.

That was the implicit bargain that the American people made when the CIA was brought into existence, that we know you're going to have to do these uns in the open. We live under omnipotent government. This is not the type of government the founding fathers wanted. We see that in the Fifth Amendment. No life shall be taken from anyone without due process of law. Due process, as you know, means notice and a trial, formal notice. Well, today they go out and assassinate people and you can tell that nobody's bothered by it. I mean, I'm bothered by it. You're bothered by it. It's murder. That's all it is, is murder, the taking of life without due process. Let's look at a few examples that you point to in your article. When President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, decided that Muammar

Gaddafi had to go as the, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, the dictator of Libya, they didn't use diplomatic or economic means. They didn't concoct a reason for a declaration of war from Congress because they never would have gotten one, they just used the CIA to destroy the armaments around him and send him fleeing from the capital. And the CIA whipped up a crowd of people that filed on him. Eventually he suffered a horrific death. And Mrs. Clinton and President Obama pretty much boasted about it that they had liberated Libya, what was at the time one of the most prosperous countries in Africa is now a poverty ridden disaster. to have lunch with a colleague of his by American drones dispatched by either the CIA or some aspect of American intelligence, but not the military. And President Trump at the time boasted about it. Now, we were not at war with Iraq where this murder took place. We were not at war with Iran, of which Soleimani was a high-ranking member of the

military. And yet the president and his team quite literally got away with murder and boasted about it. So question one, are there more of these that we don't know about? And question two, why is it now public? Why are they boasting about it? Well, on question two, it's the arrogance and hubris of power. I mean, after the 9-11 attacks, the Pentagon, the CIA surfaced in terms of the power that they wield within the federal government establishment. They couldn't care less what people think about who they're assassinating. Who's going to do anything about it. The Supreme Court has already said when they assassinated an American citizen, that Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, the Supreme Court said, we're not going to get involved. We don't have the competence to second guess on assassinations. That's a political question. The Congress, I mean, they're owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Pentagon and the CIA.

They're not going to get involved. Usually the president's on the same page, but even if he isn't, it's the Pentagon and the CIA, they're going to call the shots. So, and then, but really, if there's ever going to be a change, Judge, it's not going to come out of Washington. It has to come from the conscience of the American people. Where do you see any church ministers who are always emphasizing the importance of life and the life of the unborn and rightfully so? Where is their concern about life when it comes to these assassinations? The only justification is, oh, well, Iran's an opponent. It's a rival or Libya is an enemy or whatever. But as you point out, nobody's at war here and it's just legalized murder.

It's all it is. The Constitution and you mentioned the Fifth Amendment, make it clear the government can only kill if there's a legitimate congressional declaration of war or with due process, which means notice, hearing, fairness, trial, right to appeal, and presumably a legitimately imposed death penalty.

And whatever you think of the death penalty, I happen to be a fierce opponent of it. It is lawful. Those are the only two circumstances under which the government can kill. The government can't just come up with kill lists as it did in the Obama administration. And apparently in the Trump administration as well, somehow Soleimani's name, General Soleimani's name got on a list. The president said, yeah, go ahead, kill him and I'll boast about it. And my and my base will will like it.

Well, if presidents can do that, then they can do anything. Then there's then there's no limit to who they can kill. because he was born in New Mexico and his 16-year-old son, who was also killed in a separate attack, by the way, also by the CIA. So is it your view that the conscience of the average American is no longer irritated when it learns of these killings, these murders. Yeah. First of all, I may have misspoken. The Anwar al-Awlaki case may be, I don't think it reached the Supreme Court, but in the case of General Rene Schneider in Chile during the period 70 to 73, the CIA was instigating a coup. They conspired to kidnap this guy and the kidnapping went violent and Schneider was killed in the streets of Santiago.

And as you know, under the felony murder rule, the kidnappers are responsible for that. And that kidnappers were the kidnappers were American federal agents. That's right. Were the agents of the American federal agents. They were Chileans, but they'd been retained by the CIA. And when the Schneider family sued, that case did reach the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, oh, no, we can't second guess it. It's a political question. In the Al-Awlaki case, Al-Awlaki's father got wind of the plot to kill his son by American agents using drones. And he filed an application in the United States

District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the government's favorite courthouse, because they rarely lose, asking to have the government restrained from killing his son. I've never heard of such an application. And the government basically said, well, we know two things like this. And the judge said, well, how can I restrain them from breaking the law? They don't break the law. Two months later, the son was vaporized by a drone. What has this done to the conscience of the average American? Well, you use the word hardened.

I use the word stultify. It's paralyzed the conscience of the American people. That was one of the great tragic consequences of converting the federal government to a national security state from a limited government republic, which was our founding governmental system. People just have this collective yawn when they hear about an assassination. And yet, this is something that should strike at the conscience when your government is out there depriving people of life without due process. I mean, to me, I'm shocked every time I hear of an assassination.

And to answer your other question, there's no telling who else they're assassinating. They're in the Middle East. We hear that they're killing people on a regular basis with drone assassinations. We don't know who they're assassinating. I'm not even sure they know who they're assassinating. But what business do they have doing this, killing people that have not done anything to the domestic United States? Jacob Hornberger, we'll leave it at that. I don't think this is going to stop, but we're not going to stop discussing it. Thank you for joining us today on Judging Freedom. My dear friend, always a pleasure.

All the best. Thank you so much judge