Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Is Pete Hegseth a War Criminal?

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Is Pete Hegseth a War Criminal?See 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 Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025. It's a snowy day here in the northeast of the United States. Colonel Sunshine, Colonel Karen Koukowski, joins us now. Colonel Karen, always a pleasure, and thank you for your time. Before I pick your brain on the military rules of engagement and what I say are the war crimes of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggs, some other questions. Is Marco Rubio the Secretary of State of the United States, or is he just a placeholder? I mean, you imagine I'm saying to President Trump, I've got to go talk to Putin, Ray McGovern, did a great imitation of this yesterday, and Trump's saying, no, I'm sending my son-in-law and my developer buddy from New York. Not the FBI-veted Senate-Connor.

confirmed lawful secretary of state. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I really think from the very beginning, he appointed Rubio to kind of keep his enemy close and controlled. Because, you know, politically, you know, Rubio wants to be president. That's always been a, I mean, I think that's probably how he and Rubio met, you know, in the primary sometime. So, yeah, this is.

And, you know, in a sense, I give Trump credit because I don't think Ruby. is a very good Secretary of State, even if he was given traditional authority for that job. I see him as reactive, not diplomatic, not well-read. I don't seem as a very good Secretary of State. So maybe Trump views him the same way, and he clearly trusts his friends. Well, you might be on to something, because we know from his record as a Congressman first and later a senator from his many many public statements from his close affiliation with mrs abelson who by the way is known as dr abelson i believe she is an md this is shelton

adelson's wife who now wields what trump says is a 60 billion dollar fortune whatever he is an arch zionist and an arch neocon he only shares one of those in common with trump the arch Zionist, if Trump sends him to negotiate with his opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, the negotiation is going to go nowhere. Yeah, no, it's true. And when you've, I think Rubio has been at the table with Lavrov before. Of course, Lavrov is quite, you know, quite the qualified and formidable, you know, foreign minister of Russia.

I mean, he's, he is very capable and just, you know, he. He can run circles around a lot of people and certainly run circles around Rubio. And I think that's been apparent, too. So, you know, with Whitkoff particularly, I can't say a kind word about the son-in-law. But Steve Whitkoff is, he has a gravitas about him. I don't know what he knows or understands, but I think he knows people and he knows real estate. He knows Donald Trump and he's trusted by Trump. That is probably the key thing that he's trusted by Trump and the right.

Russians know that, but in terms of knowledge of geopolitics, good Lord, Lavrov has forgotten more than these other fellows know. The son-in-law is just the son-in-law. I mean, his field of expertise is building high-rises in Jersey City, New Jersey, and that's what he's done. Yeah. Now he wants to build them in Gaza and maybe in Dubai and maybe in Moscow if they can ever get together on that. Yeah, it's really embarrassing because when you have the way Trump operates, and it's one thing to have your friends close to you, that makes sense. But when he starts putting family members in charge, and particularly his son-in-law,

who around the world, I would not say is highly respected. I think he's young, he's arrogant. I'm sure he's made money, but he was also born into money. I don't think that is a cause for a global respect of Jared Kushner. So using him in the way Trump does, I think is seen very much as nepotism, where we don't get that same effect with Whitkoff. Whitkoff is a trusted advisor, and I think that is legitimate in the world of foreign policy. But, yeah, I think Trump should just lay off the use of Kushner altogether. Even if Kushner is effective, and even if he trusts him, he sends a message.

that this government is run by oligarchs. And that's fine. It probably is. But we deny that it is. That's part of our messaging. Oh, we're not run by oligators. We're, you know, whatever. Yeah.

Speaking of democracy and all that. And so Trump does no favors for himself for his foreign policy or his reputation by relying on Jared Kushner. So they're over there this week. I don't know if they're actually going to see President Putin or just. Sergei Lavrov or Foreign Minister Lavrov won't deal with them because they'll only deal with its opposite numbers. I don't know how the Russians will react in terms of the protocol of it. But isn't Ukraine on its last leg, both militarily and because of these now public, we all knew about it, but now public massive corruption scandals?

Yeah, yeah, and I think this, I think militarily they've been on their last. legs for a long time. We know Zelensky politically has been on his last legs. You know, he's not popular. He cannot hold elections without being guaranteed of losing power, both himself and his party. So that's always been on its last legs. But the fact that the corruption has been exposed, because like you said, what do you mean? We've known about this from day one. And day one goes way back before 2014. You know, Ukrainian corruption in Washington closely intertwined for decades. Okay. So this is no secret. It's not a surprise. The fact that it's brought up now is a signal to Zelensky and a, and certainly to the EU, to NATO. It's a signal that we're done. It's over. You cannot salvage this war. And of course, you know, the NATO people, the key European states that want this war to continue are in a shrieking panic mode right now. You know, this is, this is, they realize what's happening. But now, but no, I think. the corruption thing, everything is timing, but it's not lucky timing. It is timing by design to

kind of press this issue. But yeah, the military has been done. I mean, if you've got, you know, 300,000 to 400,000 open cases of desertion, the estimated deaths and losses and injuries of Ukrainian army is, I think over half of what the Ukrainian army was before this thing started. And they've lost a lot of their youth, their young people. Nothing is working for Ukraine. It's been over for a long time. Here's an example of a neocon attitude about Russia as if it were still the Soviet Union. Now, he does have some redeeming features because we'll play a second clip in which he acknowledges

that the killing of the people on the speedboats, probably criminal but before we get to that here's congressman uh mike turner classic neocon russia phobia i've been asking almost everybody this week what their opinion is of what he says and i'm anxious to hear yours chris cut number 10 one thing that i think everybody understands is that you can't have you can't be america first and and uh pro russia uh because you know russia has is a self-declared adversary of the United States. It's fielding, you know, new advanced nuclear weapons that are specifically targeting the United States. It's constantly attacking the United States with offensive cyber. It continuously identifies both NATO and the West, the United States, as its adversary.

So in this, and, of course, when it identifies Ukraine as its adversary, it does so in identifying the West and the United States as its adversary. You have to understand that. the balance of this peace arrangement has to be one where you have to look at Russia as a skeptical adversary. I mean, if that's the attitude of most members of Congress, I don't know where we're going to go. Where is Russia a self-proclaimed adversary of the United States? Where does Russia have nuclear weapons aimed at the United States? Where does he get this from? Well, he gets it from the talking points, okay, from the Atlantisist think tanks, the anti-Russia neocon think tanks produce these talking points. And, you know, Congressman are very busy people, and they really have time to do their own research.

So he is reflecting what he's being fed by the folks around him. And he doesn't really, it's not interested in learning anything more than that. So he's just a tool, and that's fine. I mean, Congress people are busy people. Sometimes they don't have time to think about what they're saying or check out the facts. But Russia, of course, is not particularly the post-Soviet Union. That doesn't exist. So Russia is much smaller.

It's a federated republic. It has its own issues, but it's also independent in many ways. So it's kind of a – it's not a closed system, of course. That is true. but it has the ability to run itself as a peaceful, self-contained country, and it has been trying to do that for some time. And also, it has a president who's served for, I don't know, 20 years off and on with Putin, very similar to Netanyahu, you know, during the same time frame, really,

where we've had a consistent Israeli prime minister, which means we know this guy, right? Just like we know Netanyahu, we know Putin. And you can look back to what Putin has said at any time it is remarkably consistent. It is not war-mongering. Even his explanation of the SMO, the invasion into the Dumbas, his explanation was very clearly not against the U.S. And really not even against Europe. It was a very specific thing I need to protect Russians in the Dombas. That was kind of what he's looking at.

And we're like, what do you mean protect him? What do you mean protect him? Your grain's a great democracy. It has rights for all people. You know, we have our talking points immediately that counter that. But, yeah, he's, if you even look for five minutes, you would understand that what the congressman is being fed is bogus information. And, you know, like I said, these congressmen don't have time to educate themselves.

Can the United States military destroy speedboats containing civilians, legally, that 1,500 miles from the United States who are not engaged in combat? Not legally, no, not legally. I mean, technically, they're conducting acts of terrorism. And if you think about, when we think about terrorism on the water, Americans are quite familiar with what goes on in the coast of Somalia for years and years and years. You know, there's kind of a pirate enterprise that goes on down there. They've even made Hollywood movies with Tom Hanks, right, about how that works.

And so that is terrorism on the high seas. That is what that is. It's been around forever. And that's what we're conducting in, a lot of these places. In fact, I would extend that to include off the coast of, I guess, North Korea, or maybe South Korea, where we accidentally terminated innocent fishermen there and tried to cover that up a few years ago. Also, I think the Navy

Seals did that, I'm pretty sure. And this has made the news a few years after the fact, but yeah, this is terrorism on the high seas. And I guess if you're a pirate, this is pretty cool. Right? But it is very antithetical to the law. International law. It's antithetical to the Constitution and our own law. And it would be punished. It would be very terribly punished by the United States if some other country or terrorist group behaved in the same way. We would go after that with all kinds of high and mighty moral superiority and rhetoric and law. and we would bring the, you know, bring it down. When we do it, it's okay.

We're ruining our military. We're ruining our military by putting them in these positions, and we are creating not just a monstrous military, which is reflective of our monstrous state. We are creating monsters among our military, and we'll be dealing with that, too, when they come home. It always comes home. Chris just posted a little non-nobes,

verbal clip, because if we have the words there, then my colleagues at Newsmax will complain to YouTube, in which I made an argument earlier today, which has been rerun by my colleagues at Newsmax, arguing that, and it pains me to say it because I worked with them for seven or eight years at Fox, I know him personally and knew him socially. A small world, his best, he's a Princeton graduate, his best friend at Princeton is the son of one of my best friends from Princeton, a classmate of mine. But nevertheless, his behavior here ordered the killing of innocence, profoundly against the law. It's an act of murder. Those six members of Congress who made the clip saying don't obey illegal orders, this is a classic

illegal order. There's a guy on a boat. The boat has been destroyed. He's hanging on to the remnant of the boat for dear life in the middle of the ocean. you have a legal duty to rescue him. Instead, they killed him. They blew him away. You know, that reminds me the imagery that you just described, a guy hanging off the boat. We have a moral duty to rescue.

They're unarmed, innocent. We've already damaged their boat. We have a duty. We as Americans in World War II were enraged at the stories, both true and exaggerated, of how the Japanese treated our sunken ships in the Pacific and our, you know, survivors off of torpedoed submarines. And those were horrendous stories that enraged the American people. And in 1967, you have actually described the very act that Israel conducted on the USS Liberty,

where people in the water and survivors, some burned, covered in oil, injured, were strafed by people on boats, strafed by Israeli airplanes, in order to eliminate the witnesses. And in Israel's case, it was to eliminate witnesses. That was why, that was the purpose. And is that what we're doing? Are we also attempting to eliminate witnesses to hide our crimes? Because I don't think anyone can argue with what you've said. I don't think anyone can argue that these are crimes.

Definite, defined crimes illegal for anyone in the United States to do. And that includes the president. That includes Hedgeseth, the Secretary of so-called war. It includes the soldiers and seamen, the Navy SEALs, whoever, the airmen who are conducting this murder. It's against the law. It is an illegal order. They will not be protected. And the Constitution that we serve and the oath that we take is we accept lawful orders.

This is the most precious thing about that oath. here's here's something that'll aggravate you even more colonel uh a question there are many but this is one to caroline levitt the president spokesperson uh yesterday well i won't even use the offensive language you'll hear it chris cut number nine you said that the uh follow-up strike was lawful what law is it that allows no survivors the struck the strike conducted on september 2nd was conducted in self-defense to protect Americans in vital United States interests. The strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict. Self-defense. Two guys hanging on a burning piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.

They pose a threat to the United States. No, and they committed no crime. We have no proof of any crime that was committed. We are destroying the evidence of their crime or the evidence of their innocence, as well as themselves. Yeah, this is a, that is a very interesting argument because I think I could probably justify almost any crime by saying it was self-defense in some other place. I'm defending myself from four time zones away

or I'm doing this because in three generations, you know, I have to terminate this person because they're going to have a kid someday that's going to harm America. I mean, this is just idiotic. It wouldn't stand up in a courtroom, not even a kangaroo court, I think, would abide by that. Ambassador Chas Freeman this morning said, it's the Israeli way of war. We are imitating what they did to us in 1967 with the USS Liberty. Here's one more involving Carolyn Levitt.

You know, there was another instance of survivors. this instance, the survivors were murdered. This is September 2nd and as far as we know, it's the first of these eight or nine attacks. There was another attack about a month later in which the survivors survived. And the Navy captured them and they called the DOJ saying,

what do we do with them? And the DOJ said, send them home. Watch this. Cut number five. So much of the concern from Democrats and Republicans is focused on the socialists. survivors. Why won't the administration either confirm or deny or reveal whether or not there were survivors after that initial first strike? And what imminent threat would two survivors pose who were clinging presumably to the wreckage of that boat? Again, as I said, I think you guys

are sort of not listening fully to the statement I've provided. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was totally destroyed and the threat to the narco-terrorists, to the United States, was eliminated. And for any further questions about his thinking, I would defer you to the Department of War. I obviously wasn't in the room for the answer. Just to follow up, Caroline, just on the administration's policy when it comes to survivors, was there a change in policy after this strike on September 2nd? The Washington Post is reporting that these two survivors were killed after a second strike,

but then in October, two people were rescued. and return to Colombian Ecuador. So was there a decision that was made to handle survivors differently after these strikes? Not to my knowledge, no. It's the only answer that she gave that wasn't reading from a statement that somebody wrote for her, and the answer was, not to my knowledge, no. So the first two survivors were obliterated. The second two survivors were actually sent to foreign countries,

which basically said, why are they here? and the foreign countries sent them home. Now, if they were narco-terrorists, and I'm doing air quotes because that is a political phrase, not a legal one, why would they have been sent home? Yeah, absolutely. They're not narco-terrorists.

And I think we are definitely emulating, in part because our government is run by Zionists, and we are emulating the Zionist way of war, which is to, you know, any citizen whose existence may offend you is an enemy combatant and can be killed. I mean, men, women, children. We see this, of course, in the way that Israel conducts itself in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, their neighbors.

We saw it, 1967, it was tried to be covered up, but, you know, the attack on the USS Liberty very much the same. So this is a, this is definitely a Zionist tradition in the way they, view war and conduct it. And there is a huge amount of respect, undeserved respect, but it's there in Washington. Certainly Trump embraces this openly of how Israel conducts itself on the battlefield. It conducts itself as a criminal terrorist state, and we are doing the same thing. And I think Americans are smarter, a little bit smarter than perhaps Israelis in this regard. And we're asking good questions. Those reporters are asking good questions. The American people

are not going to accept this as part of what it means to be an American and to run America. They don't accept it. They're not going to accept it. We are way smarter than countries that will allow their government to, you know, conduct war in this way. It is illegal. It is dangerous. It hurts everyone, including our military. This weakens our military's ability to be taken seriously and to do its job.

Here's somebody in the administration. who does take this stuff seriously. I don't know how much longer she'll be around after this, but here's Telsie Gabbard that just a few days ago, actually three days ago, October, well, a month ago, October 31st, at Chris cut number 11. For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building. It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervene in conflicts that were barely understood and walk away with more enemies than allies.

The results, trillions spent, countless lives lost, and in many cases a creation of greater security threats. President Trump was elected by the American people to put an end to this. From day one, he has showed a very different way to conduct foreign policy. These remarks were made on October 31st at something called the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Not a peep in the press about it. Yeah, I saw a bit of that, but it was not through any mainstream media at all. Very interesting. And I think this speaks to the potential for hope.

our country. She is a true patriot. There's no doubt about it. And she's articulating something that I think Americans really, it resonates with your average American. I don't care what party they feel that they're associated with. So yeah, this is good, very positive. Yeah, I hope she stays around. Her days may be numbered. Well, they probably are, but we'll see where it all goes. Colonel. Thank you very much. This stuff is so unpleasant involving killing, especially for me, since I know one of the people involved or knew him. I haven't seen him in a couple of years, but worked with him for seven or eight years. We'll see where it all goes. Thank you, my dear friend. I look forward to seeing you next week, as always. Absolutely. Thank you, Judge.

Of course. Coming up at 3 o'clock this afternoon on all of this and the failed Gaza plan, And whatever happened to Governor General Tony Blair of Gaza, is that going to happen? Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Judge the Politano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.