Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : CIA and Revolution in Georgia

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Larry Johnson : CIA and Revolution in GeorgiaSee 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 Monday, May 20th, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us as usual. Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. I want to start with breaking news first, and there's breaking news today in a number of areas, but let's start with the International Criminal Court, where the prosecution has asked a panel of judges to authorize the filing of an indictment,, if they can, the execution of arrest warrants on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and three leading Hamas figures, one of whom is a friend of our colleague Alistair Crook, and Alistair tells us that this particular fellow is the negotiator who hops from Doha to Gaza to Cairo, and he's scratching his head as to why they're pursuing him. But anyway, let's start with what you think the international reaction, if any, will be for what will soon be indictments and arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu. Yeah, I think Shakespeare weighs in on this. Sound and fury means nothing. You know, that's a bad public relations view for the Israelis.

But in the ultimate kiss your sister moment, this ICC, who frankly, they're notoriously corrupt. Jack Smith, the prosecutor of Donald Trump, he was at the ICC and there's credible allegations that he was involved with shaking down other countries. In other words, saying, hey, pay us some money and we won't indict you. So the fact that they politicized this in such a way, because I think both, as Alistair's pointed out and Scott Ritter has written about, the attack by Hamas on October 7th was not a terrorist attack. It was a military operation with two clear objectives. Objective one, attack and destroy Israeli military bases on the perimeter. They did that. Defeated the Galani Brigade in one instance. And second, take hostages that could be used as bargaining chips to release more than 3,000 Palestinians

that were being held that had been taken hostage by the Israeli government. And so, but to treat Hamas in the same way that they're treating Bibi Netanyahu and crowd who are legitimately killing women and children. The Israelis keep touting that, oh, Hamas has killed all the, they murdered these 40 babies. Give us the names. Give us the names. List them out. They haven't because it didn't happen. The Hamas did not murder a bunch of babies. They weren't beheading babies. They weren't baking babies in ovens. It's a lie. And it's really a damnable lie. It's damnable because it's untrue. It's damnable because so many Americans, including members of the House of Representatives, believe it. What you just said about baking babies, I mean, the phrase is repellent, was repeated by the Speaker of the House of Representatives when he was on the Columbia University campus, Mike Johnson, a few weeks ago. Either they believe it, in which case they're incredibly naive, or they don't believe it,

in which case they're lying for political purposes. I'm not sure which is worse, because they have the power of the purse and just sent another 20 billion to the Israelis. I agree with what you say it takes courage to say what you just said but even under international law the occupied country has the right to resist the occupiers by violence if necessary and the occupiers

do not have the right to use violence back I didn't write the law you didn't write the law that's universally accepted even by the Israelis international law I'm sure that they went after I didn't write the law. You didn't write the law. That's universally accepted even by the Israelis, international law. I'm sure that they went after Hamas to please the US. Right. Well, by the logic of the ICC, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, they all should have been indicted too. As I said, if this came out of the ICJ, I think it would carry more weight.

But the ICC has been such a politicized animal, and it's been really used for corrupt purposes. I don't think it has much credibility. large court of 17 justices before whom we all watched the South Africa case against Israeli alleging genocide, and they found ample evidence of genocide. That's the International Court of Justice. The ICC is part of the Treaty of Rome, which was never ratified by the United States Senate. That is a criminal court. It cannot try people in absentia. It can only try them if they're there. So unless Netanyahu decides to take a vacation in Italy,

he's probably not going to end up in the ICC. Can he go to the U.S.? Yes, because the United States did not ratify. I suppose some rogue prosecutor of the U.S.? Yes, because the United States did not ratify. I suppose some rogue prosecutor of the U.S. could try and arrest him, but the feds would move in and extricate him from that arrest. Okay. Second breaking news this morning is the death of the president and foreign minister of Iran in a helicopter crash. Now, we haven't heard any credible evidence so far or any credible allegations so far that it was anything other than a crash. It's odd that there were three

helicopters there and only the one with the president and the foreign minister in a crash. The other two landed safely. But what are your thoughts on this and on whether this means policy change, regime change, or not in Iran? Number one, the weather was so bad. Because when you saw the initial pictures of rescuers trying to get there, and you could barely see the rescuers. So I don't find it unusual that even though, as Alistair pointed out earlier this morning, that the helicopters were flying at least in somewhat close proximity to each other, that in that white-out condition and you're flying strictly by instruments, the pilot's got to have his or hers eyes glued on those instruments to make sure they keep the aircraft level.

Because otherwise, if you just look out, you get disoriented immediately. So it's very likely that this was an accident. But the suspicions, the conspiracy theories are already starting up, and the Israelis are celebrating it. So it'd be natural for the Iranians to assume that perhaps, you know, could this have been sabotaged? And they'll find that they, I think, can find that out by examining the wreckage to determine, did it burn out because it did crash, you know, ran head on into the mountain or, you know, was there something that happened on board uh i think the odds are high

that in the new election you're going to get somebody who is more uh hard line more determined to deal with the israelis than raisi and just listening to some of the comments particular of u.s legislators like uh you know senator r legislators like Senator Rick Scott and others, they're celebrating. They're like, oh, this murderer, this terrible person's dead. Yay. And, you know, again, it's one of those other lies that's out there. They keep portraying Iran as this great terrorist state that has killed all these people. Let's be frank about it. The country that's killed more civilians and military operations is the United States. It's not Iran. But, you know, we don't look in the mirror and take responsibility for what we're

doing to other people. We like to project. And the fact of the matter is Iran has not been an active sponsor of international terrorist attacks that are going out around the world. They have been an active sponsor and supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. But that gets into the whole other question. The terrorist attacks by Hamas, we finally got the firm data set in that 24-year period, only 594 attacks, and 90% of those were firearm engagements, basically between settlers and Palestinians. You know, that's not Osama bin Laden flying planes into the World Trade Center. Just it's a whole different category of violence. When Julian Assange's lawyers last appeared before the High Court in Britain, the High Court said, well, we have our doubts about whether or not Mr. Assange can get a fair trial in America as if he were an American, can invoke all the defenses an American would, which means the First Amendment,

as interpreted in the Pentagon Papers case, and would not be subjected to the death penalty. Rather than sending somebody from the DOJ into court to make those statements under oath or under penalty of ethical prosecution as a lawyer, if a lawyer materially misleads the court. They had the U.S. Embassy political people write a letter to the court. The court didn't accept the letter. So the court said, okay, you have one appeal left. You can appeal on these issues. The real reason for this, however, in my view, might be to give the Prime Minister of Australia and whoever's negotiating for the U.S., not Biden personally, time to try and resolve this. In this letter that the U.S. sent to the court, which the court

rejected, it said his maximum penalty would be four to six years he's been in solitary confinement for five years yeah so what are your thoughts on this uh uh matt ho was over there because they thought two days ago the court would accept the letter u.s marsh. Marshals were there at the prison ready to take him in shackles in a government plane to Alexandria, Virginia, but it didn't happen. Well, I mean, this is one of those historic human rights abuses. What's been perpetrated on Julian is just beyond the pale. And it's a reminder, you know, I don't want to hear any U.S. official do any criticism of any other country for, quote, human rights abuses and restricting political access and freedom of the press. Hypocrites. They are God awful hypocrites because they don't recognize, you know, just because Julian Assange embarrassed George W. Bush.

Well, too damn bad, you know, because telling the truth about what was going on in Iraq is apparently something where it's not allowed anymore in this country, which we, you know, we keep talking about land of the free, home of the brave. But it ain't free, and we're certainly acting like cowards. So I welcome this news, and hopefully it will lead to finally some sanity. But hey, the Brits are just as bad as the Americans in this. The fact that they're keeping him locked up without evidence of a crime, just evidence that he got access to information

that he did not solicit. That's the other thing. He wasn't out paying Chelsea or Bradley Manning at the time to cough up with the information. Manning did it, reached out and provided it. Julian Assange, frankly, did the same thing in the whole Seth Ritch case, but that's another story. Right. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, I want to ask you about what American military officials have

been saying to mislead the Congress and the American public about the weakness of Ukraine military and the strength of the Russian military. I also want you to explain to us what's going on in Georgia, not the state of Georgia, but the country of Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet bloc. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank. It still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less.

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of that country to prevent them from enact, trying to prevent them from enacting a law that in terms of common sense says that if you're a non-governmental organization, if you're a charitable organization, and you're receiving at least 20% of your funds or more from outside the country, you've got to file a report with the government to say, hey, we're on the hook with some foreign organization. Oh my God, United States is threatening Georgians with sanctions if they go through with this, even though it's exactly in sync with our own FARA legislation, you know, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. And, you know, the Brits, everybody in the EU are just going crazy. Now, here's the other thing. The president of Georgia is a citizen of France.

She was born in France. Yeah, her parents came from Georgia, but she was born in France. She grew up speaking French. She only got a passport to Georgia when they elected her as president. Okay, think about that. You know, she wouldn't even be allowed to be anywhere on the ballot in the United States because you have to be a natural born citizen in order to serve president here. So what we have is the West trying to launch what's called a counter color revolution, trying to ensure that the government of Georgia is completely in sync and under the control of the West so we can use it as a springboard to attack Russia. Because if this legislation passed, it would reveal that these NGOs are getting money from the CIA and MI6. Well, they'd be getting it through cutouts.

Right. They wouldn't. Well, through what federal prosecutors would call money laundering. It doesn't come directly from the CIA or MI6 through a centurious route. Yeah, doesn't, you know, Bill Bernson sending him a little note with his face on it, saying, courtesy of the CIA. But the point is, these outside organizations are directly meddling. Now, the other thing that really sort of the icing on the cake on this one was you had three foreign ministers from, you know, I think like Estonia and I forget the other two.

They showed up in Georgia at a rally speaking about condemning the legislature for its action. And I wrote, I said, could you imagine what would happen if the foreign minister of Russia, Lavrov, and the foreign minister of China, and then the foreign minister of Hungary, showed up at a Trump rally in New Jersey to condemn the actions of the U.S. Congress? Oh, yeah, that'd go over well. We'd be saying, oh, yay, freedom of speech. We uphold democracy. You know, nonsense. You know, we would see that as an insult to this country, as, you know, illegal interference. And we'd go after them. But yet we support and encourage that kind of thing overseas.

And the rest of the world sees this hypocrisy. This is why the United States is losing credibility. We do these things only when it suits us and our interests and then to hell with any kind of international principle. Are the intelligence agencies there threatening a revolution or threatening regime change? Well, yeah, what they're trying to do is they've already got control of the presidency. They want to get control of the legislature. And they want to get Georgia so that Georgia is now, you know, there was a time where Georgia was used back in 2008 to try to provoke a war with Russia. And they got the rear ends handed to them. They got beat within a period of about three weeks.

So since then, the Georgians have said, you know what, maybe we all ought to get along with the Russians. And listen, historically, Georgia has been a very, very important part of Russian history. I mean, Joseph Stalin, he was from Georgia. And then there were other leaders as well in the Soviet Union time that were from Georgia. So it's not like Georgia is something irrelevant to Russia. But the West has seen it as, again, another one of those proxies that we can try to use to weaken, to destroy Russia. General Christopher Cavoli, a four-star American general, is the commander of CENTCOM, which I think includes all American troops. European Command. European Command.

Correct. All American troops in Europe. What did he say recently that got under your skin about the strength or weakness of Russian troops? The Russians are too weak. They don't have the troop strength, the breakthrough. So there's no breakthrough coming because they're poorly trained and undermanned. And I'm going, dude, do you not read? I mean, I'm not dealing with classified information here, but the Russian army today is three times as large as that of the United States Army. United States Army has about 452,000 soldiers, and those soldiers scattered around the world. I mean, they're not just concentrated in Europe or, you know, they're in Europe. They're in Central Command, which is the Middle East.

They're in Southern Command, which is the Middle East. They're in Southern Command, which is Latin America. They're in DOPECOM, which is the Indian Ocean Pacific Command. Hey, they're split up and divided. The Russians got 1.3 million, and the vast, vast, vast majority of those, they're all in Russia. Few in Syria, but nothing on the order. So what is General Cavallali saying this nonsense for, just to please his bosses in the Pentagon? I think he genuinely really believes it. They've convinced themselves that the briefing process is taking place within the intelligence community. I'm doing some conjecture here here but i'm basing this upon watching this iranian analyst last week who was repeating a lot of these stupid tropes that are not grounded

really in the facts but it's like you come from an ideological perspective and you say okay yeah everybody's got to look through these rose-colored glasses so here's cavoli doing the rose-colored glasses thing saying, yeah, the Russians are weak. The Russians are disorganized. They're not very skilled. They're not very trained. And it's like since September of 2022, when the Russians activated 300,000 reservists, it would be important to note that, they still put them through three months of training.

Those guys went through at least three months of training. Then every new recruit, and they've been getting about 40,000 new recruits a month, they're going through a minimum of six months to a year of training. Ukrainians aren't getting that. The Ukrainians are being given a gun and thrown out there. So here's Cavoli basically claiming that Russia is

what Ukraine really is. That's what's going on. And his refusal to acknowledge that, you know, when you make those kinds of mistakes as a military leader, that leads to you getting defeated on the battlefield. And did Admiral Bauer make similar absurd comments? Oh, yeah. Oh, that the Russians are unskilled. And you're sitting there going, let's see. In the last three weeks, the Russians have taken more territory back inside Ukraine than the Ukrainians took in six months of their failed counteroffensive last year.

So just right off the bat, if that's unskilled, you think, oh man, my God, if they were really skilled, boy, we'd be in big trouble. It's just this kind of absurdity. It does get under my skin because why can't they sit down and have an honest, objective discussion and say, look, the Russians now have a military force that's three times the size of the entire U.S. Army. And the same for the reserves. We've got reserves between the National Guard and Army Reserve that come up around another 700, 800,000 total. Russians got 2 million. So it's still of a three to one advantage. So why are we looking to provoke a fight with somebody when they've got us not only outnumbered,

but strategically positioned? They don't have to worry about sending, you know, finding aircraft to transport their boys overseas because they're at home. They hop a train and go to the front line. They're defending their country, mother Russia. Whereas the United States, we built up our military service so we can, you know, be like an Uber service, except we travel everywhere except home. And in the process of that, we've weakened ourselves dramatically. Larry, is the Russian military even operating at full tilt right now in Ukraine? And if it's not, wouldn't General Cavoli of all people know that? He should. What the Russians are doing, and see, this is part of the assumption

that Cavalli's making. He's assuming that what we're seeing from the Russians on the battlefield is they're full. That's all they can do. They don't have the ability to do anything else. Well, that's a false assumption. And I know that I've got some friends that share that same belief. And you try to correct them and say, look, the Russian strategy is what they're pursuing a war of attrition, which means they're going to minimize the personnel risks. They're going to maximize the losses on the other side. They've just come out with a documentary on RT about one of the military operations in Avdivka. It was called the Slag Heap. It was this giant mountain of mine refuse that was left over.

And the Ukrainians were dug in there. The Russians took it over with a battalion, 500 guys, and didn't lose a single soldier because of their tactics. So Russia is going to continue to bleed Ukraine. And in the process, they're also depleting NATO. NATO stockpiles are going down. Their ability to supply replacement weapons is diminishing, not increasing. And Russia's content to do that because it's under no time pressure. But what it is going to do, and I think we're going to see a dramatic change starting tonight,

because Zelensky's term is over today. After today, he's an illegal president. And you've even got Western press acknowledging that that's a fact and that's going to be a problem for him. Wow. And you think that this will result in increased Russian military activity because the Ukrainian military really has no legitimate civilian boss? Right. Well, and plus Russia, they're not going to talk to Zelensky. So Zelensky is no longer in any position to make any kind of deal with the Russians.

The Russians are going to look for somebody who's actually got some legitimacy under Ukrainian law. I'm not even sure who that is anymore. And so this is going to put Ukraine into some political chaos. Plus, they're mandatory. Hey, you got to enlist in the Ukrainian army bill went into effect two days ago. And all the streets in all of the cities of Ukraine look like ghost towns. Why? All the guys are hiding indoors. They're not going outside because they don't want to get snatched up, sent to the front line because they know that they're just going to be cannon fodder. So everybody says, oh, this is

a stalemate and this is going to go on for a while. No, it's not. They can't continue like this. And what we're not seeing is steps being taken to restore political legitimacy, open up the society, make it more democratic. No, just the opposite. It's moving in the opposite direction. And the chaos factor is going to increase, not diminish. Larry, before we go, just to lighten things up a little bit, I won't even introduce this person, but we haven't seen her in a while. And she's decided to reveal herself. Watch this. Cut number six. I think if the attacks are coming directly from over the line in Russia,

that those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are where troops are being supplied from. I think it's time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war, including, as you said at the beginning, attacking Russia's second city, Kharkiv, which is not on the front lines and trying to decimate it without ever having to put a boot on the ground. So I think it is time to give the Ukrainians more help hitting these bases inside Russia. Thank you, Victoria Nuland. It's time to use American military equipment and ammunition to attack inside Russia. Is she crazy? Let's strap her to the front of an attack of missile and fire her into Russia. I'd be fully in favor of that. I think that would be the proper solution for the cookie monster there. You know, she at least, she has a possible new career to consider.

That, you know, the CIA, instead of wanting to use waterboarding in the future, all they got to do is get hours of recordings of her, play it over and over to suspects, and then confess to anything. Well, it's absurd that she's making these comments. The only gratifying part is she's not in the government anymore, but Victoria Nuland is back to her old self. Why they suddenly put her on the talk shows over the weekend, I don't know, maybe she's bored at Columbia. Well, I guess the classes and the police crackdown on free speech are over at Columbia until September. Thank you very much, my dear friend. We'll look forward to seeing you on Friday with Ray at the Intelligence Community Roundtable.

Have a good week. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. coming up later today at two o'clock, Professor Jeff Sachs at three o'clock, all times Eastern, of course, Colonel Douglas McGregor, and at 4.30, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.