Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & Scott Ritter in for Ray McGovern

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & Scott Ritter in for Ray McGovernSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, January 17th, 2025. It's the end of the day, the end of the week, time for our Intelligence Community Roundtable. Larry Johnson is with us as always, and Scott Ritter is sitting in for Ray McGovern. Gentlemen, welcome here. Always a pleasure. Larry, to you first. Is the deal as we understand it for a ceasefire in Gaza negotiated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, along

with Israel and Hamas? Is it a real serious ceasefire, or is it an inauguration pause? Depends on who you're talking to. I think from the standpoint of Hamas and from the Arab leaders, it's a real deal. I think from the standpoint of Bibi Netanyahu and his cronies, they're going to try to get away with this being just a phase one, and then they get to go back to business as usual and killing Palestinians. The wild card here is what I'll call, you know, Trump's narcissism. And, you know, I take with a grain of salt the fact that Trump's been the only narcissistic president. Excuse me, let's line up Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and even George W. Bush. It's a sea of narcissism.

But the thing that Trump's got invested here is Trump's not just trying to cater to the right-wing Israeli, the ultra-Zionist faction. I think he really wants to establish a legacy of having brought peace to the Middle East. That's what he wants. Now, he has surrounded himself with a bunch of Christian Zionists that are fully in bed with Bibi Netanyahu and his ultra-right-wing extremists, but never discount the possibility that Trump wants to be liked by the Arabs as well. And he's not going to sacrifice his legacy to save Bibi Netanyahu, that much I'm sure of. There's no real love lost between, you know, he'll make nice and he'll look like he's buddy buddy with Bibi.

But, you know, he knows that Bibi is more of a snake than he is. And so this, it's Hamas, I think, will abide by the terms. And the Israelis are going to do everything in their power to claim that Hamas is violating the terms so they can go back on the offensive. But once they do, if they do that, it's going to, I think, alienate the significant portion of the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs, the Emiratis, the Omanis, the Kuwaitis. And Trump wants to be buddies with them too. So Trump's the wild card in this entire scenario. Scotty, this may sound ridiculous. Are the Israelis and is Netanyahu trustworthy when it comes to a deal? It doesn't matter.

And I'll tell you why. Because, again, I agree. If this comes down to Donald Trump, there's one of two ways that this deal, first of all, this deal didn't happen without Donald Trump. The Biden administration was incapable of putting pressure on Israel sufficient to get them to agree to a ceasefire during the time left in the Biden administration. In fact, all the information suggested Netanyahu was just going to drag this thing out until Trump came in and then play on the fact that Trump had surrounded himself with such a pro-Zionist group that Trump would automatically fall in line with whatever Benjamin Netanyahu wanted. Now, we found out that that was not the case when Trump started retweeting Jeffrey Sachs. That should have been the big hint. But the real hint came in November

when Trump sent his special envoy, who has no legal status, by the way. Trump's not president and the special envoy, therefore, is an envoy of nothing. But to show you the power of Trump, that special envoy went over there and Brett McGurk, the negotiator for the Biden administration, brought him in

and let this guy take the lead on several critical things, such as sitting down with Netanyahu. The key is what he told Netanyahu, because Netanyahu immediately fell in line and said, okay, we have a timeline. We have to get this thing done. What did he tell Netanyahu that caused him to fall in line? One of two things. One, I hate you. You're going to die. Do what I tell you to do or we're going to abandon you. Understand Netanyahu is in more political trouble right now than he has ever been. Seymour Hersh hinted at this when he wrote a sub-step a couple months ago, talking about how Netanyahu had violated the law in releasing classified information

to shape public opinion about the hostage rescue or the hostage issue in a way that was disingenuous to try and shift blame on Hamas when in fact he and Ben-Gabir were the ones who shuttled and scuttled the whole thing. The courts right now in Israel are going after him in a big way. He is in a lot of trouble. And I think, I believe that he was told, we can help you, but not unless you play ball. If you don't play ball, we're done. You're done. You're out. You're in jail. You'll die in jail. You'll spend the rest of your life in jail. Your wife, Sarah, will be arrested for corruption. She'll spend the rest of your life in jail, and that will be your legacy. Or you can play ball, and we're going to get the ceasefire, and then you're going to play ball too, and you're not going to mess around

because I agree with Larry. Trump doesn't want to come in and play games. This isn't a game. Trump wants the legacy to be the man who created peace in the Middle East. Whether he can accomplish that or not, we don't know. Interesting op-ed piece in The Hill today by a former Iranian nuclear arms negotiator who says there is a door open right now for a nuclear deal with Iran. They're ready for this deal. And Trump is ready for this deal. So I think that's the direction Trump's heading. He sees Nobel Peace Prize in his eyes, and he's not going to let Israel mess this up. So I believe

that he put the twist there. Netanyahu is in risk of having his government collapse. If this was a game, it's a damn dangerous game. Ben-Gavir is ready to jump. He may jump ship, you know, anyways. And that's the collapse of the Netanyahu government. There's no guarantee he's going to be able to put together a coalition to replace him, which means he's on the outs. He needs Trump. If Ben-Gavir drops, he needs Trump to make the phone call to the Israeli moderates saying, if you want American support, you back Bibi on this one because I need Bibi right now. So Netanyahu, this isn't a game. This isn't them playing some – everybody's sitting there thinking there's some backfired game.

This is too risky. Netanyahu has too much on the line, and I think Trump is playing this right now to his advantage. That's my assessment. I don't think that this is – Larry, is the so-called ceasefire a defeat for Israel? 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.

Oh, yes. I mean, look, even without the ceasefire, the last 15 months have been a defeat because we were told, you know, we've always been told that Israel is the most powerful military in the Middle East. Now, and this will probably anger some of my Arab friends, but my old boss at State Department, a retired Marine Colonel, Dominic Richard Aloysius Gannon, on the eve of the first Gulf War, he said, Johnson, he says, now we're going to find out why everybody thinks Israel is so great. And I said, why is that, sir? He goes, because they've only fought Arabs. Now, what we have seen over the last 15 months is Israel's had the complete dominance in terms of air supremacy.

They've got the Hamas fighters contained in an area that's five miles wide by 25 miles long. And they've cut off Hamas from any kind of effective resupply. Hamas is carrying light weapons, you know, rocket propelled grenades, some mortars, carrying light weapons, you know, rocket-propelled grenades, some mortars, some automatic weapons, you know, rifles. And yet, despite all of the military advantages that Israel has in terms of tanks, artillery, rockets, bombs being dropped from the air, missiles, they have been unable not only to destroy Hamas, not able to defeat Hamas, but Hamas is growing in strength. So, you know, Israel can put as much lipstick on this pig as it wants. It ain't Marilyn Monroe.

They have not won. And it has exposed the limits not only of Israel's military power, but in the course of this, it also exposed the limits of U.S. military power because we were unable to stop those Houthis from shutting down the Red Sea. So, you know, when they take it all together, the fact that Hamas has hung on like this, despite, you know, the massive casualties that have been inflicted upon the Palestinian civilian population,

it stands as a, you know, it's a Pyrrhic victory, but it's a victory. Scott, is it fair to say that it pays to take hostages? Hamas always knew that. The value that Israel puts on Israeli life, I mean, it's sort of ironic. We talk about the value that Israel puts on Israeli life, yet the Hannibal directive, which allows them to kill Israelis before they fall. Which we know they did on October 7th. 100%. You know, the bottom line is Israel killed more Israelis than Hamas did.

End of story. No debate. So the, but we saw the value of these hostages. Let there be no doubt about it. These hostages have destroyed Benjamin Netanyahu politically. And that was the whole goal of the hostage taking, the leverage that could be brought to bear on it. So, remember, we're not talking about two equal powers here. Hamas is the underdog.

This isn't, you know, pure warfare. So Hamas has to use whatever weapons it can use. And for them, the political weapon is a big deal. And this taking of hostages gave them a huge political advantage. It created a, it drove the Israeli operation. It influenced Israel's, you know, conduct of the campaign. And so there was extreme value on the part of Hamas for taking these, for these hostages.

And I think the record will show that it was a successful move by Hamas. This was an American assault on Gaza. You could say it was made in America, American weapons, American planes, American bombs. The spigot was never turned off by Biden. Larry, no matter how many times prudence and morality should have told him to do so. Is there any blowback towards Americans for the slaughter, for the genocide? there should be but there probably won't be you know go back to your own judicial career if you if you had a defendant standing in front of you who had shot and killed 12 people but you realize that number one he was a felon he couldn't own a firearm and then you find out what the firearm was provided to him by his neighbor who was fully aware that he was a felon

and also provided him all the ammunition and And when he ran out of ammunition, gave him more, even after he killed some people. So you would have held that person as liable as the guy who actually committed the murders. The United States has been a facilitator of murder, a facilitator of genocide. And in the course of this, over the last 15 months, the prestige that the United States was once accorded in the Middle East, if not, you know, they may not have liked us, but by God, they sort of respected us. But that's gone out the window. There is no longer any kind of respect, I think, for the United States. Now, Donald Trump's keen to recapture that. You know, he made this attempt with the Abraham Accords during his first term, and I think he's going for Abraham Accords 2.0

in the second term. And that means reestablishing, trying to rebuild relationships with people, especially the Saudis. The Saudis, though, since Trump was in office, have, one, reestablished diplomatic relations with Iran. And Iran, ironically, in this entire negotiating process, has played a very positive role. They were actually playing a crucial role in persuading Hamas to go along with the deal. And I think part of that comes from the fact that Iran is feeling better because it's now bolstered with its security pact with Russia, which was signed into agreement today. I want to transition over to Ukraine. But before we do that, one last question on this so-called ceasefire.

Scotty, rumors throughout the Israeli press, I don't know what the source of this is. I read it myself in an article that I'm pretty sure I saw on Ynet, that there is a side deal between Trump and Netanyahu, and it has three components. One, if the Israelis repopulate and resettle the West Bank, the United States will not object. Two, if the IDF has to go back into Gaza, remember, they're leaving in six days. If the IDF has to go back, if this thing happens, if the IDF has to go back into Gaza, Trump will back them up. And three, most troubling to me, and probably to you guys, is Trump will lift the embargo on Pegasus. For those watching and listening unfamiliar with Pegasus, this is the Israeli software manufactured by an Israeli company called NSO. It's zero-click, so it allows the owner of the software, the possessor of the

software, to download the contents of every digital device, mobile, desktop, laptop, mainframe, without the owner even knowing it. When Joe Biden found out the FBI under Trump had purchased ZeroClick, he ordered them not to use it. They stored it in a warehouse in New Jersey. I know that sounds like it's out of The Sopranos, but it's true. And then he put an embargo on it, so it couldn't be sold theoretically anywhere in the U.S. Trump has told Netanyahu he'll lift that embargo. First of all, does this side deal make sense to you? And if so, is it reprehensible or rational, Scotty? The side deal does not make any sense. And the reason why it doesn't make any sense is that

Trump is not president and Trump knows he's not president. Therefore, Trump's in no position to make a side deal like this that has any binding. I would say that there might be a side suggestion, meaning that this real estate friend of Trump's who was the envoy would have said, look, when you do this and when Trump becomes president, he will be willing to discuss the following issues with you. But the idea that Trump would go out on a ledge and negotiate on behalf of the United States government with specific deals with Israel, knowing that it will never be secret. Because if it was a deal, you're hearing about it now, he's broken the Logan Act. This is literally a violation of the Logan Act. He can't do it and he won't do it.

So I don't think- Well, whatever threats Wyckoff or Bitkoff, I forget his name, the real estate, billionaire real estate guy who supposedly is the one that made the deal happen he was acting as if he were speaking for the government that's a violation of the logan act too no if i tell you to sit down and shut up you sit down and you shut up i didn't tell you that i'm going to negotiate this deal and we're going to do this and that i just said sit down and shut up assuming he didn't purport to represent what Trump is going to do starting Monday afternoon. That's right.

All he had to do is say, what he said is, it's the equivalent of, you mentioned Sopranos, but Tony wants this deal to happen. You're going to make the deal happen, right? And the guy's like, sit down and shut up and make the deal happen. You're starting to sound like you're from Jersey, Scott. It's a lot of sopranos. But it's reprehensible even if there is a deal. Look, this is the foreign policy of the United States of America. I mean, Donald Trump will be the president, but we're talking about the United States of America.

And generally speaking, we have a system in place to do that. I think this would have Trump getting ahead of everybody, the Defense Department, the State Department, everybody in a way that sets the wrong tone. I hope that the side deal is not true. Larry and I have discussed zero-click till we're blue in the face. I have researched and written extensively on it. This would be reprehensible. It would also be self-destructive because they would use it on the American government. I might have some zero-click in here. We don't know. Right, right. Who knows if we have it? All right, before we jump to Ukraine, I have to run this clip of our friend and colleague, Max Blumenthal, yesterday with Secretary Blinken at Blinken's unhappy swan song before the State Department press corps. This is a little bit longer than a minute, and it gets a lot more dramatic as it goes on.

Chris? I have. i have even greater respect even greater appreciation uh for you asking the tough questions for you holding us to account being on the receiving end sometimes that's not always the most comfortable thing not always the most enjoyable thing but it is the most necessary thing 300 reporters in gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in i'm happy to address we all knew we had a deal everyone in this room knows we had a deal tony and you kept the bombs flowing i'm happy to why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism? Why did you allow my friends to be massacred? Why did you allow my friends, Homs and Gaza, to be destroyed when we had a deal in May?

You helped destroy our religion, Judaism, by associating it with fascism. You waved the white flag before Netanyahu. You waved the white flag before Israeli fascism. I look forward to taking questions when I get a chance to finish my statement. Your father-in-law was an Israel lobbyist. Your grandfather was an Israel lobbyist. Are you compromised by Israel? Why did you allow the Holocaust of our time to happen? How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide? How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide? You too, Matt. You smirked through the whole thing every day. He smirked through the genocide. Thank you. This is Max Blumenthal picking up where Ray McGovern left off with Trump's belt.

Yeah. You know, Max was wise enough to manage it in a way that they didn't have to carry him out like they did with Sam Hussaini. But, you know, Blinken, oh yeah, I'm happy to answer your questions, except if it's questions from Max Blumenthal and Sam Hussaini, forget about it. You know, I think as Chas Freeman, I remarked on one of your earlier interviews this week, Judge. Anthony Blinken is going to go down in history as one of the absolute disgraces of any secretary of state to have occupied that position, a complete debacle, and one that has put America in greater danger, created more security threats, and caused the deaths, facilitated the deaths of millions. Because when you combine the loss of life in places like Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, along with what has taken place in Ukraine,

you know, Blinken's got blood on his hands. And that blood will haunt him, I hope, for the rest of his days. Scotty, will Blinken, will Biden, will Sullivan, any of them ever be put to justice for what they've done? Biden has virtual immunity. The Supreme Court has said that. So anything he did in his official capacity, he can't be touched. Jake Sullivan is a national security advisor. So his advice will be linked to the president.

He's not somebody who is confirmed by the United States Senate. Blinken, however, is a genuine constitutional officer. And I think that if the Trump administration wants to, and they should, they should investigate the last eight months of the Biden administration, when the coup d'etat took place and the role that Tony Blinken played in removing Biden and then sitting in for Biden and making decisions that are presidential in nature that he's not empowered constitutionally to make, bypassing the Department of Defense on a variety of issues. Tony Blinken is a criminal. He's a man who is, I believe, has violated his oath. He's a man who suborned democracy. He acted as an unelected dictator.

And I honestly believe that if they want to pursue him, he will be arrested and he will be found guilty of treason because this is what he has committed. That is a traitor that's up there speaking. I'm not talking about the policies that he implemented. Hell, Henry Kissinger implemented horrible policies, too. Every president has implemented horrible policies. I'm talking about a man who violated the Constitution of the United States. Maverick. Larry, switching gears before we conclude, how much longer do you think the Ukraine military can last before they just put down their arms and go home? I've given up predicting it because, you know, on paper, you know, they shouldn't last past the end of March. Maybe they'll hang on. But, you know, Russia is accelerating its move to the west

once they take pokrovsk uh and and eliminate that is a stronghold they're already well on their way to taking chasafyar and teretsk uh they will move to the nipa river and that that will establish a natural dividing line between East and West and Ukraine uh so the Trump will have a lot of power to decide this because if Trump Trump can end the he can end this war real quick on first day second day he just simply informs Zelensky hey you're done we're not sending you any more money. The spigot is turned off. And then to recall both U.S. military officers as well as CIA personnel said, you guys are done. Pull out. Get back. That would send a very clear message to the entire Ukrainian leadership, not just Zelensky.

And on top of it, the U.S. has quite a bit of leverage with Zelensky because nothing else, if he wants to have a valid passport or a ticket to come to the United States to, you know, try to live out his life in peace, the United States can control that. He either, Zelensky cooperates or no visa no passport got it gentlemen i have to run thank you very much scotty thank you for jumping in uh last minute as you did larry always a pleasure to end the week with you great conversation great conversation i'll see you both next week all right thanks so much thank you coming up next week uh our usual Monday crew. Ray will be back, Larry will be here,

and we'll start at 8 in the morning with Alistair Crook. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.