Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable : Weekly Wrap - 3 July - America's 250th Birthday

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

INTEL Roundtable : Weekly Wrap - 3 July - America's 250th BirthdaySee 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, July 3rd, 2006, the beginning of a three-day holiday here in the U.S. celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But Ross, it's the end of the day and the end of the week, our favorite get-together where we wrap on the week's events, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.

Ray and Larry, as always, welcome here. Thanks, Judge. Thank you. This morning, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported, which probably means that the CIA leaked, that Mossad plotted to assassinate the foreign minister of Iran and the Speaker of Iran's parliament, the two principal negotiators with the United States. And the United States learned of the plot and warned Tehran, and then nothing happened. Should we be surprised at such a plot, Ray McGovern? No, not at all. This is modus operandi.

What we might be surprised at is the way this thing was leaked, the way it was published in both major house newspapers, so to speak, and it bespeaks an intention to blacken the Israelis in a way that seldom do, the New York Times and the Washington Post. That's what surprises me. I can easily believe that the plot was real. Well, Larry, this is a conspiracy to commit murder. So when the United States warned Tehran,

did John Ratcliffe call up his buddy, David Barnaya, and say, stop it? Well, it wasn't the United States that uncovered this. I mean, this information is two months old, Judge. I mean, this happened during the first visit of the Iranians with the Americans in Islamabad. Wow, it's just reported this morning. Yeah, they're pretending like, oh, it's brand new. Oh, you know, and I think actually what Ray said may be the real purpose behind this,

because I think there's actually other information out there circulating about a new plot to try to kill the Ayatollah, Muktaba, Khawah, So, you know, they're putting this old out just say, you know, Israel, you know, they tried to do this before. In fact, I was on, I was communicating with Professor Morandi back then at the end. In fact, at the conclusion of that meeting, I told him, I said, I hope you guys got some alternative travel plans going home because I said, I would not be shocked that Israel's got a plot. I remember you saying that, but my point is, if the CIA discovered this from, some source, and if they told Tehran, that they also tell Tel Aviv, we don't do this. Well, again, I'm saying CIA didn't discover it, and CIA didn't tell Israel anything. This was uncovered by the Pakistani Intelligence Service, and they knew about it. So we've seen, Judge, just on this point, we've seen some really strange things coming out of the administration, claiming like, new development. Like yesterday, yesterday they claimed, okay, the Marines have now arrived offshore in the USS Boxer.

And I'm going, what? That boxer, the USS Boxer left San Diego on the 18th of March. It's only a 45-day sale to that point. They're now saying instead of a little over a month to get there, they're now saying it took three months to get there. This doesn't make sense. So the United States is putting out a lot of what I call disinformation. Ray, have you, can you recall a government as terrified of peace as Netanyahu's? I guess I can't.

We're watching the computer at his brain. Search database, search database. It's a long period that I've been through here. No, he's got both a personal interest in this because he'll end up in jail if this thing goes down further. And, of course, he's got a national interest in protecting what he considers to be Israeli equities. Now, he's in a box, okay? And so is Trump. And I think it's opportune to quote what Foreign Minister Arachi from Iran said about,

what exists now under the memo of understanding. Here it is, quote from Arachi. The terms of this memo make it crystal clear that Trump has committed the U.S. to muzzalizing, muzzling his pets in Tel Aviv. If these pets ignore their master, Iran will school them. Any threat against Iran, Iran will receive immediate, powerful responses. So here's Arachi recognizing the real world saying Putin,

not Putin, Trump and Netanyahu are both in a box created for themselves. They can't get out of it. And that's the way people seek extreme measures. Again, I'll just say one more time that in extremists, I do not rule out that Netanyahu would resort to use of nuclear weapons. Larry, I think I know how you feel about this because I discussed it at length with Pepe yesterday. But does the U.S. have the slightest intention of enforcing paragraph one of the memorandum of understanding, which is the sovereignty of Lebanon?

Not yet. and they've violated it already, and it remains to be seen if they'll come around. You know, the key, the reason Trump signed that MOU and the activity we ought to be keeping our eye on over the next week and a half is when Trump said at the G7 that we were going to run out of oil in four weeks, he wasn't suggesting that there was no longer going to be oil coming out of the ground. What he was referring to specifically, but he didn't say it, was this high sulfur content oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf that is essential because our refineries are set up to process that kind of oil. The refineries, it doesn't mean, it's not a situation where you can just take any barrel of oil in and the refineries will churn out diesel and aviation field.

No, they are set up specifically to deal with certain. types of oil, the sulfur-laden. And what Trump was saying is we're going to run out. When he said we're going to run out in four weeks, he was not kidding. I did the calculations yesterday based on the Secretary of Energy's own numbers. We've got to know as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as we speak, Larry. We got nine days left, eight days left. This is what you wrote last night. When you wrote it, it was nine. It's now eight. Yeah, we're one day since then. So this will be for the production of diesel and aviation fuel. It doesn't mean that there's not going to be any produced,

but we are experienced a shortage of 20 percent, and without that 20 percent being made up, that there will be a shortage of diesel and aviation fuel, and they're going to have to make choices about who's going to get the aviation, who will get oil that we've devoted for aviation, who will get oil for diesel. That's why Trump said that at the G7. It is that serious and nobody's paying attention to it.

Except you, Larry. And to your credit, I mean, Larry has done at Sonar 21, which is Larry's website. I don't know how you do this. I do a lot of writing, but I couldn't do it seven days a week. God bless you. It's all race fault. I was trained at the CIA by people like him to do what I do. Wow.

you just made a great, you read a great comment from Foreign Minister Arachi, Ray. Do we know the status of the U.S. defenses of Israel, how damage they have been by the Iranians? Larry would know better than I. Larry, you said last week that some of those defenses were being withdrawn. I've seen contradictory reports. it's clear that we're not in as good a position as we were a month or two ago. But how is that withdrawal going, Larry? Do you know? Well, all I know is that Pete Hagsis signed a withdrawal order now eight days ago.

Okay. And so the flow of aircraft we've seen coming in is it's like we've called the Uber. Here, we're at the corner of walk and don't walk. Come pick me up. So that they've started that withdrawal. In fact, I think that's one of the reasons the administration put out this, hey, the Marines are now on site. They're ready to go.

They've been there for two friggin months. Okay. So it's a little bit of deception. The one thing I also know for certain, though, is the cats, the crisis action teams. They're back to an eight, a nine to five, five day a week schedule. You know, a week, one of the reasons I was predicting that we'd go to that the war would start on the 28th or shortly down. after was one week prior to that, they stood up the cats on a 24-7 basis.

Anytime you get that kind of, if you will, planning and operational cells in place, you know they're getting ready to do something. By the same token, when they go back to bankers' hours and five days a week, they're not geared up for the kind of off-step. Got it. Who's in charge of Hormuz as we speak, Larry? Iran. I mean, it's just, and in fact, that's according to the MOU.

Paragraph five of the MOU says that it's the responsibility of the Islamic Republic of Iran to ensure a way to get all ships that want to go through through the strait. Nowhere in there does it say Iran in cooperation with Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. No, no, doesn't say that. It doesn't say that they have to do it, work with. the United States. It leaves it explicitly to Iran. Iran has set up a procedure called the Persian Gulf Trade Authority, PGSA. They got protocols. All you got to do is fill out an application, submitted to the IRGC, and provided you're not an Israeli-owned ship or you're not going to Israel,

you'll get to go out. And so Iran is still calling the shots on that, no matter how much the United States wants to pretend otherwise. Here's the vice president on all of that three days ago. I wonder if he knows what he's talking about. Chris number five. So I think there are a few things that we want. We want durable commitments that are verifiable and backed up by inspections that Iran will denuclearize their entire country. Okay. We're going to see how we get there. Number two, we want to see what kind of an arrangement actually exists in the Middle East between not just Iran and the United States, but the GCC, Israel, Lebanon. We're going to play that situation out. And then on the Strait of Hormuz, I mean, I think you actually said it well.

which is that the straight is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the Strait of Hormuz. And some days, actually, more oil coming out of the strait than came out before the war even started. More oil coming out of the strait than came out before the war started. That's almost inconceivable, Larry. It's nonsense. It's a lie. Right now, there are, and you can go, the best side I've found for this,

and I'm not paid by them, so, but it's called Vest. Finder.com and you can you can zero in on the Strait of Humus they have a map and then you can click on the the ship icons and it brings up in a sidebar what the name of the ship is is it a tanker is it a cargo ship who owns it where is it going and all of almost 95% of the oil that's come out of there has gone to china or other parts of Asia there is zero Zero oil that's come out of there in the last 15 days or 16 days now. That's come to the United States or Europe. Wow. So I don't, you know, so, you know, J.D. is whistling past the graveyard on this. Because the original purpose of this was get this straight open.

So the United States could start getting some of that sour crude and they're not getting it. And it's still stuck there in the Gulf. Wow. Ray, I'm going to ask you why Vladimir Putin would have said this. Chris, cut number three. Russia has encountered an unprecedented kind of pressure from the Western elites. They wanted to deal a strategic defeat against us on the battlefield. field, they wanted to destabilize our society, but they fail at everything.

They continue to fund the Kiev regime that they use as a battering ram to destroy Russia. And let me emphasize that again, Russia can only be a strong and independent country, or there will be no Russia. There are only two paths. Whenever we show weakness, we are being ignored and being treated only with a violent approach. They always test us, they try to remove us as a global factor of power that stands against evil. Like I said, they have always failed. They will fail this time, and they will fail. or river.

Brian McGovern, in your view, is this for domestic political consumption and performative, or are these very serious concerns that Putin has that he would articulate them so ostentatiously and to such a high-end gathering of academics, think tanks, intelligence, and military? They're very serious concerns, Judge. And this is precisely why he said on the 28th of June, just five days ago, that, look, Ukraine is not going their way. We are trying to get a strategic victory where the West is trying to get a strict against us. And so we will continue the special military operation. Now, there's one new element here, which is more alarming than all the others I've seen so far,

and that is that Finland. Finland has approved the transit and deployment of NATO nuclear weapons on its territory. Lithuania announced earlier today it would do the same. Chancellor melts in Germany is cheering them on. Now, what you have here is the makings of a Cuban missile crisis in reverse. For those who are too young to know what happened in 1962, the Russians put strategic missiles in Cuba with nuclear tips on them, and Kennedy said, no, that's too far, withdraw them. And Khoshov, thank God, did. Now, if these people put nuclear weapons in Finland and in Lithuania, and God forbid elsewhere,

the Russians are going to react very, very strongly, and they're going to try everything they can do to prevent them from going in there. If they're in there, I can't vouch what the Russians will do, but they have all manner of ways to retaliate, like Al-Echniks and all other kinds of sophisticated weaponry that they will use to attack a NATO nation. in my view, if it deploys nuclear weapons on its border. That's what Ukraine was all about, of course. And that's why Finland, Lithuanian, now they have NATO members. They're going to feel the Russian blows if they go ahead with this project. Larry, your views?

Are Putin's fears well grounded? And if they are, why is this happening now? Do these people in Eastern Europe sense that the Russians are vulnerable because they've spent five years in Ukraine? Yeah, they're simply not looking at the reality, at the facts. This underscores the points that Sergei Karaganov is making recently. Sergei is a leading academic, heads up, heads up one of the schools that's equated with the best of our Ivy League. It's called the New School.

But he basically said that Europe has lost its fear of Russia. that it is assumed that Russia will never use nuclear weapons, therefore Europe can do whatever it wants to Russia and will face no repercussions. And it was in that context, as Sergei was saying, we may get to the point where we're going to have to use a tactical nuke on Europe. Now, he wasn't advocating that as a first step

or as likely in the immediate future. But as a prelude to that, the possibility that if these provocations continue, and if particularly with Germany and the UK, openly talking about going to war with Russia, I mean, the Germans have been not shy about it at all, that Russia takes it seriously. And then on top of it,

what Ray was describing, what Finland and now Latvia are doing, that as Putin made clear at his speech a week ago Tuesday on the 23rd, when he addressed the, the various graduates of the military academies. Right. That we remember Operation Barbarossa and basically that the Soviets were ill-prepared for that.

And he was basically saying, we're not going to make that mistake again. Wow. Here's a former and maybe future Russian President Medvedev was the only other person that spoke at that same place from which President Putin spoke with very, very strong language

saying, you'll hear the translator at a moment, they want to wipe Russia off the map. I've never heard anything like this. I'd like you both to comment on it. Chris No. 7. Our servicemen, our troops, our brothers and sisters,

with arms in there, with weapons in their hands, continue to oppose those who want to destroy our civilization. Our enemies want our country to be removed from the global map. They speak about it directly, and the people who speak like this are not just ordinary citizens. Those are heads of states. The heads of states are saying they want, to destroy us and our children, everything that our forefathers have created for the future of our country.

United Russia will not allow them to defeat us. Larry? Yeah, I mean, I've learned from my dear friend Ray, where he said, listen to what the Russians say. They mean it. They're not, he's not, he's not participating in some oratorical contest or just out to promote some nonsensical line. They damn well mean what they say and the mistake the West keeps making is pretending that their leaders are as vapid and foolish as our own. And that's not the case. So, you know, they're drawing, the Russia is drawn a red line here.

That's why, you know, it told Lavrov and really the rest of the Russian leadership warned Western diplomats, get out of Kiev because there's, you know, we're not going to be responsible if you're still there. And on Wednesday, when they hit, they hit some key hotels where a lot of Western diplomats stay. We don't know how many casualties. There have been reports that there were Western officials, particular NATO officials, killed in those strikes. So Russia's making good on its promise.

Ray, your thoughts on former president Medvedev statements. Well, I think he's repeating what Putin said, and that is the West writ large now. You're not saying the Europeans. You're saying the West, including the U.S., is out to inflict a strategic defeat on us still. Okay. Now, the NATO summit is coming up on the 7th of July. I think that's Tuesday. That's what we should all look at and see what happens there. This may, in my view, be the last NATO summit

because unless Trump changes his mind, NATO is a fictician. Now, the interesting thing is a fiction, I would say. Also a fictician. Anyhow, what I would say is this. Medvedev, we learned today, is going to Techran. He's going to participate in the funeral celebrations. I was on with Professor Morandi yesterday. We were tuned into the gatherings of the thousands of people in the crowds.

Let me just stop you. Chris, you may have some B-roll of this while Ray is talking. Go ahead, Ray. Yeah. Okay, well, we learned today that Medvedev is going to the funeral. That's a biggie. a real biggie. He may even meet, I think, if he's up to it, with Hamanei, the deceased, his son, Muktau, Hamane. So what does this mean? That means the Russians are taking the

gloves off and say, look, this was a war of aggression in Iran. This was a war of choice in NATO, forcing us into, by trying to get Ukraine into NATO, forcing us to react. And And so we're finished with it. And besides, there were all kinds of rumors that fourth generation Russian fighters, I think they're what are the SU-27s, I think, may be due to be given to Iran. Well, not right now, but in the future. So here we have Russia throwing its lot in with Iran in a very ostentatious way. Former President Medellezyezsche showing up to the funeral.

That's a big deal. The funeral lasts, I think, about six or seven days. I was going to say, I think the Israelis probably won't try to assassinate Mijidiv or this new Supreme Leader. But maybe that would be a really good target for them. Who knows? The Israeli should do. We were just looking at the president of Pakistan, Ray, one last subject matter back to. Well, Judge, before you move on to that, could I just comment it?

I think it's important about what we're going to. what we're going to see in the next seven days or up until July 9th. This is going to be the largest state funeral in the history of the world. The current world record holder was the 10 million Iranians that showed up in 1989 for the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini. What makes this one difference, as Ray was noting, It's not just the attendance of the Russians. The Chinese have sent a senior delegation.

The Indians have sent a senior delegation. There are more than 100 countries represented. Not even that many countries attended the funeral of John F. Kennedy. You know, when you total up these events, you've got the funeral of JFK, the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi. And then you had the funeral of Khomeini. It wasn't covered at all in the West. But what we're seeing right now that's taking place in Iran is historical. It's remarkable.

And the West, by not covering it, pretends, oh, that didn't happen. Right, right. All right, guys. I'm off for a couple of weeks, unless, of course, something dramatic happens, in which case, Chris, to his regret, and my regret, will find you, and we'll come on air to discuss it. My electronic gear will be with me. but all the best. I'll miss you. Look forward to seeing you in the second half of July.

Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks, Judge. Happy Fourth. Thank you. Happy Fourth of July to everyone. Even those of you who are not Americans, we won't be dark. We'll be posting some things, but we won't be live unless events warrant. And if events do warrant, as they have in the past, we'll be with you. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.