Judging Freedom - Leaker Arrested_ Ukraine Russia War Latest - Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 13, 2023. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Colonel McGregor joins us now. Colonel, as we're speaking, or in the past couple of minutes, the FBI has arrested the person at whom the government is pointing fingers as a probable source for the leak of the Pentagon documents. The documents, as I understand it, revealed a lot of information embarrassing to the government. Before we get into whether or not this is the right person and how they caught him and was he part of some gamer group, what is your view on the damage to the credibility of the government, by which I mean the Pentagon under Joe Biden, caused by the release of these documents? Well, as you point out, there are two crimes.

The first one is the one that you're referring to, the release of the documents for which there is no excuse, stiff penalties under the law. If this is the individual who did it, he'll end up going to prison for some period of time. The second crime, of course, involves that committed by our government and its senior leadership against the American people. And for that matter, you could argue against most of the people that are in the countries that belong to NATO, because this is exposed to lying on a scale that we haven't seen really since the Pentagon Papers. In fact, you could make an argument in some ways this is worse. Now, you and I know that if people have watched you or watched others, not just me, but others, you know who they are, Larry Johnson, Brother Ritter, and so forth. None of this is news. What's in those documents are the kinds

of things that we've been saying for many months. We've all been called Putin agents. We've been crucified in the press, ridiculed all over the place as traitors and God knows what else. All we've done is tell the truth. That's a very serious crime. And I don't know when you say how much damage. Well, first of all, most of this information, as far as I can tell, is secret and then so-called no form. You need to understand that if you want the kind of information that are in these documents that are classified secret, you can find it out through open source. You don't need satellites and extensive collection systems to get to it. That said,

some of this information, I have the impression, is TS or close to top secret, in which case collection devices, the means of acquiring information, human and otherwise, could be at risk, in which case it's serious damage. But I think the serious damage is outweighed by the good, to be blunt, because it's finally reaching the broad public. They need to know that virtually from the beginning, people in this government at every level have lied to them. The American people need to stop it. Only they can do it. I mean, it goes without saying that my hat is off to you, Colonel. I

agree with you 100%. As I understand the documents, we'll put aside what they say about Egypt and Israel and North Korea. But what they say about Ukraine is the government knows it's a losing battle that Ukraine can't win. That's the takeaway that I get. The government recognizes a kill ratio of seven to one. The Russians are killing seven Ukrainian troops for every one Russian that the Ukrainians killed. The Ukrainian air defenses are so degraded they'll be down to zero or useless by late May or early June. And the Secretary of Defense knew all this when he made the following statements to Senator Roger Wicker of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I would like you to tell me if it's any possible way

that what he said can be reconciled with what we now know he knew at the time he said it. Take a listen. With regard to your optimism about Ukraine having the upper hand, that is what you told me yesterday. It is. Now, Ukrainians have inflicted significant casualties on the Russians and they have depleted their inventory of armored vehicles in a way that no one would have ever imagined. And so now we see Russia reaching for T-54s and T-55 tanks because of the level of damage that Ukrainians have inflicted on them. And we have, in the meantime, been- And reaching for those tanks demonstrates what to you, sir?

It demonstrates that their capability is waning. And we've continued to witness them be challenged with artillery munitions and other things. And they're reaching out to Iran, they're reaching out to North Korea. I think we'll see an increase in the fighting in the spring as conditions for maneuver improve. Do you believe there's a real chance for significant Ukrainian advancements between now and the beginning of winter? I believe there's a chance, and we're doing everything that we can do to ensure that they have their best opportunity to be successful, Senator. Now, the documents hadn't been revealed to the public at the time he said that. But the documents are dated February and early March.

It's almost inconceivable he didn't know what was in them at the time he was making what, in my view, and I'm happy to hear yours, a representation that is 180 degrees from the documents. Yes, it's unambiguous, Judge. The Secretary of Defense lied. He's not the Lone Ranger. He's got plenty of people working with him and around him who have lied publicly. So is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I suspect that if you go trace

it through European command, the Supreme Commander of Europe has probably also signed on for the same lies. We have to understand that this is part of the problem that has evolved or developed for many decades. The senior leadership thinks it has a duty to lie because the political leadership has said it's vital that you do so. No one stands up and says, by the way, it doesn't matter what the Ukrainians do. They have no chance of winning a war with Russia. Everyone with a lick of common sense knew that back in January of last year, for God's sakes. And then on top of that, you have this relentless nonsense coming out that the Russians are incompetent. The Russians are stupid. The Russians are corrupt.

The Russians can't do anything. The Russians don't want to fight. The Russians are war criminals. 99% crap. What have we heard about the Ukrainians? They're all supermen. Everyone's a Medal of Honor winner. They're inflicting huge casualties.

The opposite was always the truth. Here's what we've heard about the Ukrainians. Here's what we've heard about the Ukrainians this morning. And you're certainly not going to hear it from the Pentagon or the CIA, from our friend Cy Hirsch, that the Ukrainian military, diplomatic, and political leadership has skimmed $400 million from the cash that Joe Biden has sent over there. And when the director of the CIA, Director Burns, went over there to talk to President Zelensky, he named by name, he had a list of 35 generals who did the skimming and President Zelensky's name was on the list as well. President Zelensky proceeded to fire 10 of the generals and do nothing to the others, because this type of skimming is well known and well understood. This is taxpayer dollars, or to be precise,

money borrowed in the taxpayer's name. The Congress has authorized the president to send over there, which he sent as wire transfers to Ukrainian banks and as cash in those huge cargo planes that the Air Force has. Yes, and we have covered this many times, talking about the corruption, the disappearance of equipment, and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash into all sorts of places and by the way inside the ukrainian army this reaches all the way down to the level of lieutenant colonel you've got people at every level who are pocketing cash and the soldiers know it if you go on telegram and catch the videos posted by ukrainian soldiers before they're removed you can hear them talk about it.

Ukrainian soldiers know this. Why are we hearing Ukrainian soldiers say the first thing we've got to do is go back and hang Zelensky and his crew? We want to get there before the Russians do. That's been coming through off and on for months. They know that they've been betrayed. How reasonable is it to suspect that a 25-year-old enlisted Air National Guardsman could possibly have had access to documents of this level of security, could possibly have shared them with a group of teenagers. This could possibly have gone on for months before the government caught it. Or stated differently, could this 21-year-old possibly have acted on his own? Well, let's be frank. This makes the Pentagon look like a substantial component of the larger clown show that constitutes the government in Washington

these days. I don't have an immediate answer except that I can tell you that I have worked with 25-year-olds and 24-year-olds and 23-year-olds in the army who were very reliable, who would never have done such a thing, who understood the gravity of the situation. So I cannot say, you know, as a matter of generalization, that you shouldn't allow anyone of the age of 25 or 26 or anything else to handle this. That's just unfair. I don't know the background on this man. And I, you know, again, you have officers that are appointed the task of evaluating individuals. I mean, they put them through an investigation. They ask hard questions and they determine whether or not someone is reliable. So you got to go back and find out who gave this man the access. Here's an interview that the Washington Post did

with one of the young men in his gamer group. And you tell me if this young man is credible or if the government put this out. Young man is unnamed. He refers to the guy they arrested named Jack Teixeira. We just saw a picture of him in his Air Force uniform. It looks like he's taking a selfie of himself there or looking at his iPhone in a locker room of some sort. But take a listen to what the Washington Post says is their interview of the young man. Is this credible or is this what the government wants us to believe? Watch. I would not call O.G. a whistleblower in the slightest. I don't think

that there was a goal nor some sort of accomplishment that he was looking for in sharing these documents. Of course, there's some anti-government sentiment, but that's not unlike most right-wingers in the modern day and age. Oji was not hostile to the U.S. government. However, he had disagreed with several occasions such as Waco and Ruby Ridge and thought that the government is overreaching in several aspects. There was no heavy Snowden-like conspiracy here, like some people may believe. People were reading them and they were not commenting on them they were just sitting there he is not a russian operative he is not a ukrainian operative i'll go as far to say he's not even on the east side of the world any claims that he is

a russian operative or pro-russian is categorically false he is not interested in helping any foreign agencies with their attack on the u.S. or other countries. He was a young, charismatic man who loved nature, God, who loved shooting guns and racing cars. It would appear as if he sort of grew angry with the fact that only one or two people were paying attention to these documents that he was pouring his heart out into. And as a sign of just anger, he just decided to post the full documents.

He was a very smart man. There's no way in any world that he would not know that he knew that these were illegal. With all your experience in the military, is this credible? It admittedly sounds very suspicious. There are several red flags. First of all, the man is unusually articulate. This is not a stupid man. And he comes across as having almost been rehearsed.

The things that he says, he ticks them off one after the other, what this man is not, and then does something that's particularly suspicious, characterizes him as another right winger who didn't like something or was complaining about something. You know, this may come as a shock to most of your viewers, but almost no one who volunteers to fight in the United States Armed Forces for the United States of America is a left winger. So, I mean, that's an absurd statement. But that raises the question in my mind whether or not this man is not rehearsed and is sending that message for a specific purpose. It shouldn't make any difference, frankly, Judge.

The crime is committed. I don't think there'll be much question as to that. Whether or not he thought it was going to be entertaining for his gaming buddies is irrelevant. And he's intelligent enough at the age of 25, even if he is only in the National Guard, which is, as you know, is a very temporary volunteer citizen soldier setting. He's smart enough to know that this is wrong. So he's suspicious. Our friend Larry Johnson, who I'm not going to ask Jack Devine about this. God only knows. You never know. The man may know. Yesterday, Jack had the kill ratio in reverse and claimed that the Ukrainians were killing seven Russians to every one Ukrainian

the Russians were killing. And I couldn't disabuse him of that. I mean, just read the documents. But anyway, when I asked Larry Johnson, who spent his career in the CIA and other government intelligence agencies. He's of the view that this is a government setup, that the government knows that Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin have no off-ramp for the disaster in Ukraine, and they're preparing the American public for this crash landing. And this fellow, Jack Teixeira, Gary just put his picture up, this 21-year-old whom the FBI arrested five minutes before you and I came on air. This guy is just a scapegoat. I guess that would mean that somebody from the government let him have it, gave it to him. So my question to you is, I have to ask about his age. And you and I know a

lot of smart young people. I lectured, as you may know, for a couple of years at West Point, some of the smartest, your alma mater, some of the smartest, most courageous, most trustworthy human beings I've ever met in my life, and they were all 21-year-olds. But does a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman get a top secret, no foreign security clearance? Rarely, rarely. There has to be an unquestioned critical need or utility involved in this. For him to have access to a SCIF, Specialized Compartmented Information Center, and then to read the material, to download the material, one would think under normal circumstances, no, but there are certain circumstances that might permit it. As I said before, I've worked with people just as you have that are under the age

of 30, under the age of 25. And I put my life in their hands. I know I did because I did it on the battlefield. And I would trust them implicitly. I don't know enough to know whether or not the government is as smart as you're suggesting. The second part of this is how many Americans are really paying attention to what's happening in Ukraine. And sadly, I don't think enough. We'll get back to Ukraine in just a minute. I want to play a clip of General Ryder. He's the Air Force General who's the current spokesperson for the Department of Defense. The key to what we're going to play is the question. He doesn't answer it. I would argue by not answering it directly, he is declining to refute the presumption in the question, which is, how long has this stuff been out there?

These documents were available long before April 5th and 6th. So what took so long for DOD and the intelligence communities to locate these documents? Yeah, so that's really something that the investigation will tell us. Ah, he can't answer that. Mark Milley read the documents. Lloyd Austin read the documents. Lloyd Austin then went and lied under oath and misled the United States Congress and the American public. Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, by their words and behavior, continue to mislead the American public into a fruitless, useless, destructive, counterproductive war, which they don't even call a war. I'm talking about the American

involvement. American boys are shooting at Russian boys remotely. The American CIA is stealing Russian secrets and giving them to Ukraine. They're not telling us this. No, and no one should be surprised. We haven't had a real declaration of war for a very long time in this country. And in most cases, the American people and the American people's feelings or sentiments have been largely ignored. And they've learned a very hard lesson from Vietnam. If you can minimize your casualties or keep them at very low levels, chances are no one will notice and pay any attention to what you do. My feeling is as follows. Blinken and company are civilians.

And whether or not they believe what they say is open to debate. But the people at the top of the Defense Department know the truth. Any man of honor under these circumstances would resign. I certainly would not feel comfortable as Secretary of Defense if I knew that I had willingly lied, not just under oath on the Hill, to the American people. I mean, Marshall once was asked, do you think you ever lied while you were chief of staff throughout the entire war? And he paused and he said, I need to think about it. Then he came back and he said, I think I did on one occasion, and I wasn't aware of it until I'd done it.

I think that's probably a truthful statement by Marshall. Marshall was very careful about this. And if he could not answer a question because it had implications for our security, and he went through this with Truman when Truman was a senator. Truman wanted to know about the Manhattan Project. And he simply said, Senator, please don't ask me about that. I cannot tell you. It's not because I do not trust you. That has nothing to do with it. This is far more important and I cannot discuss it. And finally, Truman let him go because he said, I know Marshall is honest. Right. And then, of course, Truman became president on a moment's notice, knew nothing about the Manhattan Project and had to be educated and, of course, used it.

This is the development of the atomic bombs by the U.S. Getting back to Ukraine, I want to play a piece for you by President Zelensky. It's in whatever language he speaks. What do they speak? Is Ukrainian a special, a different language from Russian? Oh, yes, of course. And he's supposed to speak it. So let's listen.

Okay. And then you'll hear the translation, which I believe is a computer translation. So it's a little stilted. We'll play it for you twice. Tell me if you think Victoria Nuland wrote this statement for him. The world should know respect and order will return to international relations only when the Ukrainian flag returns to Crimea,

when there is freedom there, just like everywhere else in Ukraine. The world should know respect and order will return to international relations only when the Ukrainian flag returns to Crimea, when there is freedom there, just like everywhere else in Ukraine. And what are the chances of the Ukrainian flag returning to Crimea, Colonel? About as much as the return of the 400 million dollars that we're missing. And plus the fact this business of when freedom, justice and the American way return. Give me a break. Ukraine is horribly oppressive

right now. If anything approximates a single-party fascist state, it's Ukraine. So where do we go from here? The government is embarrassed. The government is humiliated. The government's fighting a war that the government itself believes can't be won. Joe Biden has no off-. This 21 year old kid has been arrested for something somebody much higher up must have given to him in the past through his hands. Will we ever know the truth? Well, remember that from the very beginning, even though it was never stated categorically, there was never much interest in Ukraine per se. Ukraine was simply an instrument with which to attack Russia. And the goal was, quote unquote, to harm Russia,

destroy Russia, change Russia's regime, its government, depose Mr. Putin. In other words, if you look carefully, from your standpoint and mine, this is a humanitarian disaster. This is a crime against the Ukrainian people, not just against us and the people that live in the NATO countries. But I don't think that's important to them. These are ideologues, whether it's Blinken or Nuland or Sullivan or any of the people that are on the NSC staff, their goal has been accomplished in their minds to some extent. Well, we've harmed Russia. Now, the truth is they haven't. Russia is stronger than it's ever been. Its economy hasn't suffered. It's now built back to where it was 30 years ago, only its forces better, better equipped, better manned, better commanded, better led. So it's backfired. It's

been a disaster. We've probably destroyed NATO. With each passing day, look at France, look at the troubles on the streets in France. If anybody thinks that's exclusively about pensions, they're daft. The truth is that Europeans are unhappy with all of this. Colonel, do you have an opinion about how much longer the hostilities in Ukraine will go on? The Russians, when they changed horses back in the summer of last year and prepared to build up the force for a decisive operation to win control of Ukraine, whether that came as a result of negotiation on the battlefield, planned then on a 30-month campaign roughly. So that's how long they are prepared and positioned to fight. I don't think it'll last that long. I think that once the ground dries,

the Russians will sweep forward. It'll be deliberate, but they'll go forward and take all of eastern Ukraine. Will they go then over the river and head south to seize Odessa at the same time, or will they wait? I don't know. But once they've controlled the east, they'll be prepared to cross the river and go west. Because from their standpoint, unless the Europeans break away from us, which is not impossible now, and say this is enough. We Germans, we French, you know, all of us together in Europe have had enough of this. This war needs to end. We want talks. And if they will sit down and talk to the Russians and hammer out an agreement based on what I would call Austrian neutrality for whatever remains of Ukraine, then I think this

could end. They know that we're not going to do it. And frankly speaking, Judge, they don't trust us at all. And so they're prepared to go to the Polish border. Because in their minds, that's the only way they will have peace on their border. We've demonstrated to them that we are not a serious partner. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure no matter what we talk about thank you so much for your intellect your experience and your insight all the best to you sir

thank you Judge more as we get it wow if you like this, like and subscribe you'll get notices every time we do it every time Colonel McGregor is here for now, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.