Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w Johnson & McGovern Weekly Wrap 23-JAN

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

INTEL Roundtable w Johnson & McGovern Weekly Wrap 23-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? or abolish 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 Friday, January 23rd, 2000, 26. It's our favorite show. It's the end of the day. It's the end of the week. It's the Intelligence Community Roundtable, in which Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern and I

do our best to get our hands on and wrap our arms around what has happened this past week. Larry, Ray, welcome here. Thank you, as always, for accommodating my schedule. Ray, I want to start with you. Is the CIA licking its wounds over its colossal failure in the streets of Iran in the past two weeks?

No, there are no wounds unless Congress or someone else holds the CIA accountable. They'll just try again next time. They have the money. They have the people that can do. They'll try it again if it seems opportune. No licking of wounds. No holding to account. Larry, what Ray just said undoubtedly true, nevertheless is profound and manifests the absence of any moral standards whatsoever.

I mean, is this a game? Oh, the FSB beat us this time in the streets because they disabled Starlink. We'll beat them the next time. Forget about the thousands of human beings that died. Yeah, no, they're focused upon. what is the tasking, if you will, from the White House in this case. But this project to remove

the Islamic Republic has been, you know, it's been active now for 40 years going back 46 years. To when the Shah was overthrown? Yeah. Yeah. When they came into, when they took over in 1980,

we began from the outset to remove them, destroy them. Look, this, you know, I remember being enraged at the time, not having the understanding or the insight or appreciation of history. But America had listened to these chance of death to America and say, well, gee, why do they hate us so much? But yet, when you go back and look at what we have done as the United States, starting with encouraging Saddam Hussein, who later became our enemy, you know, he was our friend back then. Right. And, You know, we gave him precursor chemicals that were used to build, to construct chemical weapons,

mustard gas in particular. And as a consequence of that, and that war, it's estimated, well over 500,000 Iranian soldiers died. So we're, you know, if we use this principle, because we get outraged at Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies of Iran. Because why, Iran gives them money. Okay. If the premise is, if the principle is that if you're given money to somebody who carries out murderous acts, then you are a facilitator of that. Absolutely. Okay.

So under that standard, the United States is responsible at a minimum, at a minimum, for the deaths of a half million Iranians. And now, when you turn to the, when you're flip and say, well, Iran's killed thousands of us. No, they haven't. The numbers for the attacks, whether by Iran, which is virtually none over the 46 years, or through proxies, the numbers are less than 3,000. So tell me how 3,000 equates to 500,000. There's a reason Iran should hate us, and they don't. This is irony. Right. Professor Miranda says the same thing. You know, he deals with academic. with elites, with students, with their parents, and he senses no animosity that he's able to, he senses no animosity towards, towards the United States. Ray, in my view, Larry's 100% correct on the law. Is Donald Trump responsible for the deaths in the streets in Iran in the past two weeks?

Well, of course, you know, he is the chief executive. And unless you, well, you can't even assume that the CIA is rogue in this. It's doing what not only Trump, but Netanyahu want. So, yeah, the big thing, of course, is they finally recognized that Israel would be obliterated, favorite word of Trump's, if they went to head with this. And so I don't know whether they're going to try again or not. But they learned a lesson when Netanyahu himself called them. We may be a hole off here a little until we're maybe your own basis are going to get decimated if you go ahead.

Ray, is the CIA on the ground in Iran now? You know, they don't need to be. Mossad and the CIA are so joined at the hip that Mossad is taking care of those things. And the CIA, in my view, would be the kind of reluctant to get involved in this. even when Dick Helms, that former head of the CIA, was ambassador in Tehran, there were no singular assets reporting to the Americans, only people that Mossad was controlling. And that's half of the problem there.

If you're going to take what Mossad and Netanyahu say as gospel truth, well, you're led down the primorous path. Larry, does Mossad control some aspects of the CIA? Well, no. If you talk to John Kirooku, at least during John's time there, they stopped allowing the Israelis to come to CIA headquarters because they were always trying to bug the place and compromise things, so they'd meet them off-site.

but what has happened over the last you know I guess the last five six years started under Biden but it's continued under Trump is the United States is in a much more compliant relationship with with Mossad and we've been we've been facilitating and enabling a genocide in Gaza and with you know without any second thought And it's just, look, this, let's call it the Zionist influence. If you look at this delegation that met with Putin yesterday, Wittkoff, Kushner, and Greenbaum. Who's Greenbaum? He's now with the General Services Administration, but he's, again, he's got a record of being a Zionist.

So, you know, I guess I'm always troubled when we've got, people with, and I'll say it, dual loyalties, where they put the priorities of another country over that of America. You know, Trump's supposed to be America first. And instead, so much of this Iran project is driven by our support for the Zionist cause in Israel. And again, to emphasize that, you know, it's not a Jewish thing per se, because the last time I checked, Mike Huckabee, our ambassador to Israel,

is not a Jewish, but he is an ardent Zionist. Yes. Ray, dig into your remarkable understanding of the Russian mentality. Why would the president of Russia, and this got no press, I learned about this from Larry at 4 o'clock this morning when I started reading my emails,

why did the president of Russia spent four hours with two real estate agents yesterday. Why would he demean himself to do that? Why didn't he send his own real estate agents to meet with Whitkoff and Cursner? Judge, these are not just real estate agents. They're personal emissaries from the President of the United States. Let's be clear on this. Trump has given these two people the charge to,

work out a decent relationship with Russia, first and foremost, on Ukraine. Now, there are people not willing to believe this, not willing to think that Putin is sincere in wanting this better relationship, but I'm not one of those people. Now, let's take the readout by Ushaakov yesterday. Again, there's really two ways of looking at what he said. Just one sentence here, Quote, the negotiations lasted about four hours and were exceptionally substantive, constructive, oh, that's so far so good, that's exact translation of the Russian, exceptionally substantive, constructive, and I would say frank and confidential. Bad translation, folks.

A krovony, translated frank in this case, means open. Okay. what's the dovaritigni. That means trusting. It doesn't mean confidential. And the proof is in the pudding. For the first time since Anchorage, the Russians have agreed to meet with the Ukrainians together with the United States,

and they refused to do that until they were assured by Trump that the Ukrainians are willing to deal. Now, out of, out of the, out of, out of the, the sessions at Switzerland, we had an indication that Trump has satisfied Zelensky on security guarantees. What's left? Land deals that's openly acknowledged now. Who's meeting now in Abu Dhabi? All the people that can verify troop withdrawals, kind of things that make land deals possible. So there's great progress in store here.

And to kind of say, well, this will never work. There were only just two real estate agents. Man, this is the most progress since Alaska. Alaska decided that there would not be immediate ceasefire. Trump agreed to that, but that the Ukrainians would cooperate and there would be some sort of negotiations. The Europeans screw that up. Now the Europeans are cast.

decide. They can deal with Greenland, okay? Now there's a trilateral thing, which Trump hoped for back in August. Now he's got it. So let's see what happens in Abu Dhabi. It's today as we speak. But right now, that session went very well. It was exceptionally substantive. It was exceptionally constructive and in the words of Dimitri Ushakov, exceptionally open. And the last word is trusting. Trusting is quite a thing to say. Right. Well, they've been through.

Larry, is this going to, is this special military operation going to end because of something the real estate agents and President Putin agreed to? or when the Ukrainian military collapses? Yeah, no, well, I have a different take than Ray. Number one, the lead negotiator on this is the head of military intelligence, Kusukov. So that means what you're getting here is nothing that's going to be centered on a diplomatic solution to this. and Uschikov in his remarks concluded with, look, the military operations are going to continue and abated

until there is any kind of diplomatic solution. And we saw yesterday where Trump comes out and says, oh, yeah, I got agreement out of Ukraine, that they're going to give up the territory. And 30 minutes later, Zelensky's saying, hell no, we're not doing that. In fact, Zelensky had a complete meltdown in Davos yesterday. He insulted everybody.

He insulted Trump. He insulted the Europeans. He's in a meltdown. So the military operations are going to continue. And what's interesting is this tripartite talk that's taking place. And again, even though they haven't had negotiations between Ukrainians and Russians, The fact is they've been meeting about every month, at least on the intelligence side, to work out the transfer of bodies which have been taking place on a monthly basis.

So there have been those contacts. But when you've got the Budanov, you know, the former Intel chief that is the CIA's boy, he was now elevated to be the deputy to Zelensky and then the head of military intelligence for Russia, this is going into this is not headed towards an actual peace agreement this is going to deal with intelligence issues and frankly the terrorism issues remember this this general or this admiral who's heading up the Russian delegation he's the one that handed over the controller to the U.S. defense attach say two weeks ago before saying here here's your targeting data for what you the CIA your CIA was involved with in attacking the

residents of Vladimir Putin. So, you know, I think it is true that the Russians like Trump, and they would like to get a deal with Trump. But when we look at the other areas where Trump is his actions, he's so erratic that I can't see the Russians sitting there and said, oh, boy, he's a reliable partner. And one last point. whatever politically binding agreement Russia could reach with Trump,

it's not going to be legally binding. The legally binding means you got to get a treaty, some formal document in place. And no matter how much Trump wants to get along with Russia, I don't see anybody on the Republican, the Democratic side is a majority that are willing to entertain such a deal. Right, right.

A treaty takes two-thirds ratification. But, Ray, Trump doesn't abide treaties anyway. He has no use for international law. I want to jump to Greenland. Go ahead. Treaties are the third step, okay? Yes. Which is possible now, is a ceasefire.

That's precisely why you have the head of the GRU and Budanov and also David Arachamia, who led the negotiations in Istanbul way back in March and April of 2000. The ones that Joe Biden and Boris Johnson that persuaded the Zelensky to reject. Yeah, so this is the highest type of delegation short of Zelensky himself that they're sending there. On the Russian side, it's a very high delegation too. So this is not about exchange of bodies.

It's about exchange of territories. It's about exchange of territory, and everybody recognizes that. Now, if Salensi says himself that I'm satisfied now on the security guarantees that I've got from the United States, the only prickling point left is the exchange of territory, and the composition of both delegations in Abu Dhabi ratify, in my view, that this is the primary subject here. It's getting close to a part where you have a ceasefire, Okay, ceasefire, yeah, okay? It doesn't mean a treaty.

That comes maybe years later. But a ceasefire because Putin doesn't want this thing to have to result in his taking over all of Ukraine. That would be stupid. That would be Vietnam, okay? So he wants a deal. If he doesn't get a deal, of course. He's got the upper hand. He's going to continue.

Well, it's hard for me to believe that they'll agree to a ceasefire with all the times that Sergey Lavrov told Larry and me personally, as well as the world, many, many times we're not going to do a ceasefire. Larry, last word on this, and then I want to jump to a few other topics. Yeah, well, Russia's not negotiating to say, okay, we'll give up part of Zappariza, Harrison. That's not it. That's off the table. Russia's firm demands, and Putin's made it clear since June of 2024, that the West must recognize those four oblasts in addition to Crimea.

The real issue on territory is whether Russia is going to retain Neapro-Betrofs, Kharkiv, Sumi, Pultava. That will be the negotiations. But again, Zelensky made it very clear yesterday. He's not conceding anything. Zelensky doesn't matter, guys. And what matters is Putin. And this is what he said yesterday, I quote. Ray, no, come on.

It does matter what Zelensky says, because when Trump comes out and says, oh, I got Zelensky to agree to this, and he goes and tells the Russians that, and Zelensky comes on and says, screw that, I'm not doing that. No. I mean, he's got Zelensky in a bind. Here's what the readout of the talks yesterday said, Ushakov. Importantly, the participants between President Russia and the Americans reaffirming the fact that bringing about a lasting settlement would be unlikely without addressing the

territorial issue based on the formula agreed in Anchorage. So they're going down to press tax now. They're looking at territory. So let's get the Europeans have no agency here. That was completely clear. What formula agreed to in Anchorage? Well, that's okay. Nobody talks about that. The formula was, look, no immediate ceasefire until you get the Ukrainians aboard with the Europeans, and then we can deal in a triportite way with the three of us, Ukrainians, U.S. and Russia's. Now, Europeans were able to put the kibash on that until now. Now they have no agency at all, given what's happened there in Greenwood and everything

else. So now you have real negotiations going on, witness the level of the people who can deal with territorial swaps, territorial withdrawals, ceasefire zones, and that kind of thing. So, you know, these are not real estate agents, okay? They're from the press of the United States. Russia is not withdrawing from territory. I mean, are you saying they're going to give up part of Kerasan and Zaporizia in a deal? I mean, do you believe that?

I'm saying they're negotiating, okay? Yeah, well, but that's not a negate. They've made it clear. They're not negotiating on that. What they're negotiating on is that Europe and Zelensky and the Ukrainians, recognize that territory as Russian. Yeah, that's their maximal position, of course, but they're negotiating. You're talking about territory now.

That's clear from the readout of what happened yesterday. So, let's not. Ray, it's not that clear. I mean, you're taking the interpretation that they're willing to talk about adjusting Zapparizian and Keroson, for example, they're giving up some territory. The Russians made it clear. Their negotiation with respect to territory is that territory, is Russian. It's part of the Constitution. It's been voted upon. The people have made their

decision. Now it's an issue of getting the West, getting Ukraine, getting NATO to accept it. Then why does you want to jump? Hang on, hang on, hang on. I want to jump to Iran because we have limited time. Even though you guys are longtime friends, when you disagree, it is great television and very much appreciated. I'm wearing my own Fox News hat. on now as to what draws eyeballs. Chris and I are texting each other about how captivating it is when the two of you just go at it like this. I do love Ray. I don't want anybody to take it out that I have no respect. You know, and this is, you know, this is what the world needs. We can at least engage and talk respectfully to each. Correct. As JFK said, disagree agreeably. Larry, how close is the United

States and Israel to attacking Iran. Rhetorically, very, very close in terms of having, you know, Trump continues to send military assets there, but they've only got one aircraft carrier. And I've read some analysis, which suggests, and I agree with it, that you need at least two additional U.S. aircraft carriers in the area to be able to carry out any kind of strike. The problem is we've got now, and Ray and I have been talking about this. this week. We've got clear

evidence that the CIA is lying to Donald Trump, at least with respect to what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. And we saw that in Cy Hirsch's unfortunate article that he put out in a substack. So if they're lying about that, I can't rule out that they're lying about what could be

accomplished militarily in an attack in Iran. So, you know, they're talking about maybe 300 Tomahawk missiles, which sounds like a lot. But Iran is four times the size of Iraq. And when we look back at the massive bombing campaign we did in Iraq back in 2003, that didn't force Saddam Hussein to, you know, collapse his government immediately at all. And Iran is much bigger, a much, much, much tougher target. But I think, frankly, we're going to do it. It's just a matter of when. All right. Before you respond, Ray, I want to run a clip from Peter Orr.

He is the head of Lazard Bank. He's also the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama and has extraordinary ties to the government. And he's a major Zionist donor. I'm wondering if he spilled the beans two days ago with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times. Chris, cut number 19. I think it's very likely that over the next few days, there will be something that happens in Iran. You do. be something big, yes.

Why do you think that? Well, from a variety of different, you know, indirect information, and also, to your point, I think it's entirely possible the United States was waiting for the carriers to arrive. Was waiting for the carriers to arrive. And that this is just, so that the Greenland story is just a head fake to? I don't know about a head fake, but it has the effect of, it has that effect, even if that's not the intent. And that would mean what? How does that play out if that's actually the case?

Then the big question becomes, can you actually do regime change through effectively a bombing campaign? And I don't think we have any history in which that's effective. But we'll see. It depends what the objective of what happens is if it's to take out the ballistic missiles, that can be successful. If it's regime change, you know, that's got a more checkered history. Is this the CIA leaking or is this a guy? who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Well, I don't think we should listen to this guy. I think we should listen to Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has waited very heavily with the president and saying, look, you know, I just realized my military has told me, remember what they did to us last time around where they shot missiles out of territory that we couldn't defend against? They're going to do that again. They could cause real trouble here in Israel. So please don't do it yet.

Besides, your own troops are very vulnerable. So I don't see it coming anytime soon. Carriers are no carriers. And let's remind ourselves, carriers are sitting ducks. The last thing that Trump should be advised to do is to put a carrier anywhere near within range of Iranian Air Force or Missile. I suspect you agree, Larry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, number one, this cat from Lazar, they don't.

don't have multiple aircraft carrier. They got one. And yet this according to Larry Wilkerson, you need three to be effective. Yeah. No, I'd agree with Larry on that as well. But again, the rhetoric

that's coming out of the White House and this whole neocon crowd, they do naively believe that all we got to do is with some well-placed bombs and Tomahawk cruise missiles, we can bring about regime change. And that's simply not true. We constantly

underestimate the power and ability of these countries. And again, I just, I simply say, let's look to history. We go back to 2003, when the United States had complete air superiority. We controlled everything over Iraq. We could fly wherever we want without fear of getting shot down. Well, that's not the case. And so when you're left having to use standoff, you know, cruise missiles and other things that are fired from aircraft, the ability to deliver a lot of damage is actually limited. And people forget. Iran is a big, big country.

And when we couldn't do it in Iraq, like I'm saying, okay, what's our foundation for thinking we can now do it in Iran and be successful? It's just, it's craziness. Guys, thank you very much. A great, a great conversation. As always, the double duty is much appreciated. We'll look forward to seeing you both on Monday morning. Thanks, Judge. Thank you.

And on Monday, even though here on the northeast of the United States, we are expecting two to three feet of snow. We will be with you. Alistair Crook, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, and one of your other favorites, on Monday afternoon. Have a nice weekend, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.