Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 16-JAN

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 16-JANSee 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? 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 Friday, January 16th, 2026. It's our favorite time of the day. It's our favorite day of the week. It's our wrap-up with the intelligence community.

My longtime friends and collaborators who always do double and sometimes triple duty with us, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Larry, Ray, as always, my dear friends, welcome here. I interviewed before we get to the substantive matters, I think you both know that

Scott agreed to come on at eight this morning, and we spent a good 10 or 12 minutes discussing what happened to him. I mean, basically some bureaucrats in the federal government directed the headquarters of his bank, which is one of those large banks, not the local branch where he's good friends with the branch manager to seize his accounts and close them. And of course, they did this with no notice to him. He had filled his tank with gas, gave the kid the credit card. The kid says the card's being rejected. Scott had just used it the night before, called his wife. She went online and learned that all their accounts were zeroed out. The good news is he should have the funds from his accounts

back by the end of next week. The bad news is the government can do this to anybody with no notice, with no reason stated. Scott believes. it's a long-time vendetta that now former FBI agents and CIA agents have had against him. He's cheerful, ablient, and as tough as nails as he's ever been. So I thought I would pass that on to you if you didn't get a chance to see what he said, and I'd pass it on to the viewers as well. We will post at the end of the segment today. The people, actually, Chris, you could put it up now if you have it.

The people that Scott wants viewers to call. Paul Tonko is Scott's member of Congress. Everybody knows who Cash Patel is. Scott believes that there is an active duty FBI agent involved in this as well. And Bruce Van Sond, whom I don't know or know of, as the chair and CEO of the holding company of the bank that did this to him. Okay, to matters that have happened this week, Larry, what happened in the streets of Iran this week? Well, the failure of a joint CIA-Masad operation that was kicked off on December 28th,

when Velodemir Zelensky was meeting with Donald Trump. But this was 24 hours before Trump sat down with Bibi Netanyahu. The intelligence agencies, I believe, had concocted a crash of the Iranian currency, knowing that that would ignite protests against the government. And people say, oh, you know, the CIA couldn't do that. Well, hell, George Soros did it to the UK a few years back. So if one guy like Soros can do it to an economy the size of the breads, you bet your bottom dollar that the intelligence.

community with the backing of the U.S. Treasury can actually do it to Iran. They did. It ignited protests, but at the same time, you know, the Western narrative was, oh, this was just organic. These are people rising up against the oppression of the Mullahs nonsense because they had pre-positioned Starlink terminals, courtesy of Elon Musk. Those terminals didn't just fall from the sky like manna from heaven. No, these were purchased through the intelligence community. And they were distributed through intelligence networks to individuals inside Iran. You've got a variety of group. You got Kurds. You got the Mujahideen al-Kal. You got a bunch of Baluchis. You've got others, Azeris. So they found individuals that are opposed to the government, they're able to

funnel them these machines and provide weapons and ammunition and money. And then they coordinated the attacks. That continued until about late last Thursday, early Friday morning. Iran time when they finally got on top of it with the assistance of Russia's electronic warfare. They tracked down. They disrupted the internet. They shut down the Starlink system. Once that system was shut down, the ability of these protesters to organize and to be able to coordinate when it was eliminated. And then the Iranian security services moved in and started taking them down. This was, I think, all planned to coincide if that had not been disrupted last Friday. It would have culminated on Tuesday with a military strike by the United States who believed that the government had been so discredited that that military strike would have brought about a collapse of the government with the stories were being put out that the Molas were going to flee to Moscow.

That was all disrupted. That, I think, is why Trump called off the attack. They have no intention of ending any assault on Iran. It's going to take place. It'll probably be later. in February or March. Ray, tell me about the Iranian intelligence services because Scott Ritter, after we finished talking about his banking issues,

said that the Iranians hacked into Starlink and knew who was communicating with whom. Is that likely? Scott knows a lot more about these things than I do, but it's entirely possible. The Iranians are not slow, okay? They're really smart people. Now, they might have helped from the Russians

or even from the Chinese, but Larry's tale about Starlink and all of a sudden Starlink fails. That's amazing, you know? And why Trump called it off, he might also have been told by the military that, you know, we have no air defense really worth it salt. to protect all the thousands of airmen and soldiers we have in the Middle East and our basis.

And, you know, by the way, Israel can't do it either, that golden dome or gray dome or whatever kind of dome it don't work. Remember last time did they work in June? Okay. So the other thing is this. What Larry has just said has been confirmed by none other than David Ignatius, Winsock Supreme. Right. Tell the audience what you mean. We know who David Ignatius says by Winsawks Supreme.

Well, exactly, six days ago, he thought, we've got to go. We're going to go. We're going to take care of these Iranians and everything is a go. And it was in a New York, in the Washington Post, his favorite. Well, that's, and, you know, he's not only a Winsock. He's very well plugged in, not only to the powers that be, but, of course, for the CIA. Oh, today, no, no, we're going to go with soft power. Today, it's the same op-ed.

Said maybe op-ed page. I wrote a tweet about it. This one, he says, look, we're going to transition from hard power to soft power. And, you know, maybe, my comment, maybe he learned what hypersonic means. Maybe he and others in the deep state told Trump, you know, Oh, okay. Israel is going to be obliterated, to use your term, Mr. Trump. And not only that, but our forces in there. We're not really ready for this. So let's at least postpone that. Winsock, David Ignatius, has that today 180 degrees about what he had just a short six days ago.

So, Larry, you're not a windsock. You have the facts, but it's nice to have confirmation of a kind by Winnzok, Ignatius. Here is a member of the United States Senate. The poor soul, I feel sorry for him. He is brokenhearted that the United States did not bomb Iran. Again, watch this poor character. Chris, number 13. There are a lot of headlines out there that are, in my view, not accurate, President Trump's resolve.

It's not the question. The question is, when we do an operation like this, should it be bigger or smaller. I'm in the camp of bigger. Time will tell. I'm hopeful and optimistic that the regime days are numbered. Larry, this is absurd, really.

Yeah. Well, let me, I've actually got a source who's been involved with the U.S. air operation. Now, so let me, this is how the U.S. military is viewing the possibility of Iran launching missiles. Quote, well, we're going to shred their targeting systems. Sure, they'll be able to get a ton of manure in the air and some right might get past our first and second defense layers, but we won't care. Their manure will go haywire as soon as it gets across the water and bite the dust. the problem for Iran isn't their ability to launch stuff.

Their problem is the last 30 seconds of flight, we kicked their ass and being able to finish the job. I raise this just to point out that there is this attitude and this belief that is resplendent throughout the U.S. military community, all the way up to Pete Hankseth, down to junior officers. This is what the vast, vast majority believe. They didn't learn anything from what happened in June. They've convinced themselves that they've got this, that we can stop Iran.

But we can't stop the damn Russians in Ukraine, but by God we're going to stop Iran. And so the notion that this thing is over, and as you see with Lindsey Graham, we don't have a single politician of any stature. They're standing up and saying, no, Mr. President, we do not need to attack. Iran. Iran is not our enemy. Iran is not the foundation of terrorism. Iran is not a bunch of Islamic extremists, like the Sunnis. No, but that's not being said. Instead, we get this narrative that Iran's killed thousands of Americans, which they have not, that Iran hates all Christians and Jews. The oldest Jewish community in the world outside of Jerusalem resides in Tehran, today. So we were piled with lie upon lie, upon lie.

And so right now they're pretending, oh, yeah, we're going to talk. Hell no. We're still sending systems, aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf. We're going to go to war with Iran. And Lindsey Graham will get his late belated Christmas present. Ray, why did Trump call off the bombing? Why did Netanyahu ask Trump to call off the bombing? That's what I was just going to mention.

And when Netanyahu asked Trump to not do it, there's got to be reasons for that. And Larry, I think, has explained them. They defeated Starlink. They had no way to communicate with all these spies and Agent Profiture that they were massing in Iran. And so they had to call it off. Besides, as Larry has also pointed out, even though there's this strange belief that we can conquer all, we can't. And Netanyahu is smart enough to remember me. It was only June. Netanyahu is younger than I am, so he doesn't forget stuff. June, all right, June. What happened in June? After Iran got

rid of its obsolete stuff, it started firing missiles that obliterated parts of Israel that kept, this was all kept very secret, but the Israelis, of course, knew about it. They know that that continues. So I'm not so sure. I don't know why Trump is sending more and more troops that way because he can't possibly protect all his forces at these various bases, hundreds of thousands of them in the Middle East. And Netanyahu is probably reconciled to the fact that, whoa, now that we don't have any capability to have a real insurrection inspired and led by people from outside. So let's cool it. Netanyahu asking to cool it, well, that speaks volumes. Switching to Russia and Ukraine, Larry, the temperature in Kiev last night was hovering on zero

Fahrenheit. Much of the city is without heat or hot water. How much longer is this going to go on? Are we going to see more of Rushtniks? Yes. And there's no hope of fixing the power systems. The earliest date I've heard is like March 10th. So, you know, I think there's actually now a strategy behind Russia doing this. You know, this was proposed by General Suraviken. Way back in September of 2022, was turned down rejected by the general staff, foolishly in my judgment. But now they've embraced it. What this does is it clears the civilians out of these cities, which will then make it easier for Russia to carry out its military operations without risk of killing civilians.

So that's the primary purpose. They have now effectively turned out the lights across Ukraine, from Leviv to Kiev, to Nipro-Petrovsk, Zaporizia, Herzan, Kharkiv. The lights are off. It's in Saman Sumi, Potava. So this is, that coincides with Vladimir Putin has made a sub-Subu. significant, substantial change in Russia's negotiating position.

He announced it yesterday. And basically it is, NATO has got to go back to the 1991 borders. Ooh. Yes. He announced that yesterday. Well, 1991 is when the so-called promise was made, not one inch eastward. Right. It puts them back to NATO where NATO was in West Germany.

Now, this is, there was, you know, our friends at the Duran, Alexander McCurus and Alex Christophoto, Alexander McCurus has been noting that Putin was unusually quiet over the Christmas New Year's holidays. And he attributed that to the fact that there was, there was some real reassessment going on within the Russian government in light of the terrorist attack that was launched with the U.S. knowledge and approval against Putin's residence in Novgorod. That phone call that Putin and Trump had prior to Trump's meeting with Zelensky was intended to geolocate Putin so that he could be attacked. And when they thwarted the attack, the Russians, the fact that nobody got killed

didn't at all take away their anger. Wait a minute. You're telling me that the purpose of this attack was not to send a message, was not to wreck the House, was not to scare anybody. It was to assassinate President Putin? Yes. That's why the Russian. It's orchestrated by the CIA? Yes. That's why the Russians are so furious. Because, you know, we've had a number of terrorist attacks over the last four years. I mean, the attack at the Kroka City Center killed 143 people. If you're going to be pissed off, that should be what would really piss you off. The Russians reaction. to this failed attack was far angrier and more furious than anything that's taken place previously. So that from the Russian perspective, they believe that this was a targeted attempt to kill Putin.

Doesn't matter what the U.S. says. Oh, no, no, that wasn't really our intent. It doesn't matter. That's what the Russians believe. Then let me interject here, if I may. Sure. then why did Lava Ruff get up right away that same day and say nothing that the Ukrainians do can derail our wish to conduct bilateral talks with the United States? The Ukrainians are going off half-cocked, but we're going to keep discussing things with the United States.

And by all accounts, Whitkoff and Kushner are bound to go to the go to the United States. and by all accounts, Wittkoff and Kushner are bound to go to Moscow again. Now, I don't know what Larry's sources on this are, but I do know that the Russians have given the control mechanism to one of these drones. They're given to the United States over a week ago. Now, it's certain to contain certain technology. that indicates that the what the Russians call the state residents there near Vada Dai was the target, okay?

This is the first I've heard that anyone has proven that Putin was there or still less that the CIA wanted to pinpoint exactly where he is. Where it lies right now is the U.S. has the part, okay? It's looking at it. Now, Trump, this is the list. litmus test. Trump can say, oh my God, I was right the first time. This is terrible. Don't let this happen again. Or he could say, I'll give this to the CIA and, you know, fix it up so that we can say that Putin is lying. If the latter, and that's a litmus test of how Putin will look at whether Trump is either

sincere or whether he's not his own man. So there's been no reaction so far. I imagine the reaction will be subliminal that is not in public, but everything depends on that and on the lack of response so far by Trump to the renewal of the quantitative limits on New Start. There's only 20 days left. That's also the litmus test. And Piskof made that very clear yesterday. These are very dangerous times. Larry, was President Putin in the House when it was attacked? I don't know. I've not heard it confirmed one way or the other. I'm just telling you, The Russian reaction, and to race point, it doesn't matter what Love Roth said on the 29th. What matters is what Putin said yesterday.

Putin said yesterday, very clear, that this is, that the root causes of pushing NATO, not just back to Poland and Romania, completely back to the conditions that existed when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. That means West Germany. He was adamant about that in his remarks where he addressed a number of new diplomats that had arrived in Moscow. And, you know, so that marks a significant change in Russia's policy. And I'm sure Putin will deliver that message politely to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who, you know, they have no power. They have no clout.

They can go back and tell Donald Trump, whatever he wants. The fact of the matter is from the Russian's perspective, they view that what, that that, what happened on the 28th of December as an attempt to kill Putin. That's why they were angry about it. Larry, let me ask you right. If Larry is right, then this war is insoluble by negotiation. Well, the war may be insoluble by negotiations, but Larry is wrong. I watched that whole ceremony there. When the discussion goes back to 19 or, yeah, 1991 or whatever,

that's the, that's in the Russian draft treaty that they presented to the West and to NATO in December of 2021. I mean, that's what you say to people giving their credentials for the first time, 32 of them to the Russian president. You say, this is what's going to happen. You can't make me believe that the Russians expect, in addition to winning Ukraine, that they expect the other things to go back into their orbit and out of NATO, not anytime soon. So it's rhetoric when you're talking to people presenting their credentials. You shouldn't be taken in fact value in the matter what Alexander and Alex say. Ray, I'm not wrong on this.

And I'll tell you why. because it was in the last week that you've had President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio basically said, international law, we wipe our ass with it. International law no longer rules. It's who's the biggest, baddest, and toughest. Now, that's what, and the Russians have taken that on board, they recognize there is no agreement that the United States is going to respect.

They've already got a track record of the United States walking away from the ABM, from the International Nuclear Forces Agreement, and despite Russia's attempts to say, hey, let's keep new start going. They recognize that the United States now, based upon what Trump has said and done, remember, he went into a sovereign country and kidnapped a leader because there is no international law or rule that he will abide by. Yeah, Larry, this is not news. Putin is not naive. he's watched the U.S. do this. The question is, how will he react? And a friend of mine, Michael Brenner, a professor of the University of Pittsburgh, put it this way. In all likelihood, there lurks in the back of Putin's mind the dread fear that an unhinged, unhinged Trump,

roiling in the coils of his twisted psyche, could do something truly insane that endangers us all, Keeping company with him, however tenuous, is seen as mitigating that risk by ensuring that Trump doesn't disconnect totally from reality. So what I'm saying here is, yeah, they may be furious. Yeah, this is terrible. They may have really extreme rhetoric, like going back to 1991. But they're going to keep calm, cool, and collected. They're not going to do anything rash.

They're going to chip away at what's going on in Ukraine and win, whether or not there's a negotiated settlement or not. But, you know, news that Trump is going off half-cock, that's all news. They don't expect anything special from the Russians just because the Ukrainians have targeted their presidential palace. So, Larry, why would Putin waste his time meeting with Whitcroft and Krishna? Or will he not waste his time meeting with Whitcomb? No, no, I think he'll meet with him, but he'll deliver a message. And he'll be polite about it. I agree with Ray that the Russians aren't going to go off half-cock.

They're not going to react emotionally to this. But they also recognize that the United States at this point is not a reliable partner and is a force for destruction and mayhem, not just in Russia, but in Iran, in Central and South America, in China, in Asia, that what they're facing now is a, is a country. country that's under the leadership of a man who believes he can do whatever he wants and carry no consequence for it. And they both, I don't just describe that to Russia, but the Chinese, I think, also recognize that now. And that's, listen, that's one of the reasons you're seeing a major move over the course of the last 40 days of countries buying gold and getting rid of dollars.

The confidence in the United States is at an all-time low and it's going to continue to road. For a minute there, I felt like I was back between Dave Smith and Dinesh D'Souza. By gold. Although it's fascinating to see my two buddies and collaborators disagreeing. Before we finish... We politely disagree. Yes, we do. Yes. As JFK once said, we disagree

agreeably. Let's go to Venezuela. Here's the only person in the floor of the Senate that says this stuff. Not as eloquent as his father, but he makes this points. Senator Rand Paul, Chris number 14. Almost every Republican senator believed there was a war when a few soldiers were shot at in Gaza trying to build a pier. I agreed with them.

I think that was putting U.S. troops into war. But now every Republican, not every Republican, virtually all the Republican senators who believe that it was a war. war in Gaza now believe it's not a war in Venezuela. We still have an entire military blockade of a country, and that's not a war. The blockade is said to be, oh, we're going to control the ships, and we're going to sell the oil, and then we're going to run. We're in charge. It's our oil. We're going to be in charge of Venezuela. But that sounds to me like a military blockade, a long-term military blockade, and I don't know how we argue that that's not war. The American people are

and tired of their elected officials disregarding the Constitution when their party is in power and then becoming ardent defenders of the Constitution when the opposing party is in power. Both parties, really frankly, have been guilty of hypocrisy on this. He's very courageous in terms of having to live with Republican leadership. But to get down to some recent events, Ray, why was the first American official to meet with Delci Rodriguez, the interim president of Venezuela, not Vice President Vance, not Secretary Rubio, but CIA Director Ratcliffe. Wow.

Tells you something, doesn't it? You don't have to be a super analyst to figure that one out. You know, the whole thing, if I look at it from Moscow's perspective, this is a Vietnam possibility for Trump. Now, if he follows through with this thing, and how can he not, he's going to get immersed in what LBJ tried to avoid but couldn't by the same people in the deep state that were running LBJ. So you get John Radcliffe, whose men and women have done the deed, you get him to meet first with the acting vice president. That speaks volumes. Thanks for selecting that out. Wow. Larry?

Oh, you know, the gas lights. Tulsi Gabbard is disappeared into the woodwork. Yeah. No, the gas lighting that's going on about this, you know, for instance, you know, I mistakenly believed at the outset that are, that oil played a major factor in it. But then I actually finally, you know, got off my ass and looked at the actual numbers. Out of 45 million barrels per day that are produced globally by OPEC and non-OPEC companies, countries, Venezuela accounts for 700,000 barrels per day. Okay? That, you know, it's a fraction of the total

global production. So it doesn't produce enough to move the needle anywhere. Well, does Trump know what he's talking about when he says as a result of the oil he's stealing from Venezuela? It's going to go down to $50 a barrel? No, absolutely not. In fact, the production cost of Venezuelan oil, I think, or something like $70 a barrel? Just to get it out of the ground and refine it. Yeah, because, you know, it's not like Jed clamped in the Beverly Hillbillies where he fired a shotgun in the ground and up comes the bubble and crude. No, this is like peanut butter in a coffee mug.

Try to suck the peanut butter out with a straw. Good luck. Wow. So why did he do it? No. I think seriously it was to benefit financially Paul Singer. Wow. Paul Singer, Paul Singer required a sit go at a fire sale. Yeah. And he gets up to $12 billion. But I, because I can't, I feel the life of me. I'm with you, Ray. I am puzzled because the oil numbers don't make sense unless he was lied to.

And he believes the lies, that's possible, I suppose. Well, he certainly didn't do it as a law enforcement mechanism because the tightment of Maduro is so full of holes that it would flunk a first year law school exam. Yeah. Wow. All right, guys. We're going to go. Thank you very much. Much appreciated it.

I feel so badly for Lindsey Graham that he's going to have. Me too. Me too. Here's the folks you can communicate with if you want to express your anger. about what the government ordered them to do, not Congressman Tonko. He really has nothing to do with this, but he should be sticking up for Scott, his constituent, ordered them to do to Scott. Paul Tonko, Scott's Congressman Cash Patel, who's the director of the FBI and Bruce Van

Soan, who's the chair of the bank who accepted orders from the government, which acquaintance Scott may very well have come from a computer rather than a human being. and yet that bank, Citizens Bank, a huge bank here in the East Coast, complied. Gentlemen, thank you very much. I'll talk with my friend Pam Bondi as well. Please give her a piece of our mind. Thank you, guys.

Have a great weekend. We'll see you both on Monday morning. All the best. Stay warm. Stay warm. We're in the single digits up here in New Jersey. Down here in North Carolina as well. Wow.

Well, thank you, guys. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. And, of course, on Monday, we will. We'll have for you, Alistair Crook at 8 in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 1130, and one or two of your regulars in the afternoon. Thank you for watching.

Have a great weekend. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.