Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Steals Oil in an Emergency

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US Steals Oil in an EmergencySee 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? the government what if 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 nopalitano here for judging freedom today is Tuesday September 15th 2006 Colonel Karen Kaskowski joins us now. Colonel Karen, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Before we get into President Trump's theft of oil from Venezuela and some of the recent developments in the Middle East and in Ukraine in the past two days, I need to ask you if you think that Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth should be impeached. But before you answer, Here's Congressman Thomas Messy's answer to that question. Impeaching Peter Brian Heggseth, Secretary of Defense for High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Resolved that Peter Brian Hegsseth, Secretary of Defense, also referred to as Secretary of War by the administration, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. Using the powers of his office, Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth, direct. directed the Department of Defense in a manner that resulted in the extrajudicial killings of at least 221 persons aboard sea-going vessels alleged to be smuggling narcotics in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, principally in international waters. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that chilled independent legal review within the Department of Defense, constructed a purported legal basis for the use of military force without constitutional or statutory authorization. By substituting in such place, the use of summary lethal force by Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps elements. While doing so, Secretary Hegeseth also oversaw orders denying quarter and failing to provide rescue,

including secondary strikes against shipwrecked survivors who were ordered to combat. and the abandonment of shipwrecked survivors at sea. By subjecting persons merely suspected of criminal conduct to lethal military force without judicial process, without congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets, Secretary Hague Seth arrogated to himself and the executive branch

the roles of judge, jury, and executioner, and asserted a unilateral power to judge, determine who may live and who may die. Such a power is foreign to the rule of law, repugnant to the legal traditions and fundamental values of the United States and the Western world. What do you think, Colonel? Yeah, I'm glad he put it all together. It's definitely worthy of worse than impeachment, but certainly impeachment for sure and probably a trial afterwards for those things that are clearly illegal, you know, arrogating to yourself, to one part of government, judge, jury

execution. And that is, that's not allowed. That is precisely the opposite of what the Constitution puts forth. So, yeah, this is good. When I heard that Congressman Massey, for whom I have, for whom my admiration knows no end, that he was doing this, I thought it was for conducting an illegal war and targeting civilians, but he hasn't even gotten to that yet. This is about the killings in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, which in my view is probably an easier case to prove. You know, when two of these guys survived, and then they were killed, and then there was an uproar.

And then the next time there were two survivors, they rescued them. They didn't know what to do with them. So they called up the legal officers in the DOD who said, well, we don't know what to do with them. We better call the DOJ. So they called the Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice said, well, what evidence do you have against them? And the Department of Defense says, none. We don't have anything against them. We just picked them up off the boats that we had blown away.

Well, then you better send them home. because we can't prosecute them without any evidence. I mean, you can't make this up. They sent them back to Latin America. They were visited by American lawyers who filed notices with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice that they intend to sue

for the attempted wrongful murder of them by the United States government. Yeah, that sounds like a solid case. Solid case for impeachment. Yeah, I actually thought initially, when he was talking about blowing up ships, I thought he was talking about the training ship off of Bangladesh that we blew up, the unarmed training ship that we had just recently come off a joint exercise with. But no, he wasn't talking about that. So there's a lot.

You recently wrote about the United States government stealing Venezuelan oil. Now, Trump announced a deal for the acquisition of the... Venezuelan oil. It's really the theft of Venezuelan oil promulgated by the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro. You also can't make this stuff up. And he based all of this on a concept alien to the Constitution and of which you and I and our colleagues have been very critical. Emergency. What? What is the emergency in the theft of oil? Oh, gasoline prices are going through the roof. So you're going to steal oil that takes three years to refine, and that's going to address the emergency? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, he doesn't understand emergency, including those

that he caused, or also the solution for that emergency, which clearly, as you pointed out, we can't process that Venezuelan oil turned it into something usable in any time soon. So, yeah, I don't, he, Trump is proving himself to be very shallow in his knowledge of. of how things work in the world. I assume he knows real estate, but he doesn't seem to know much about anything else. You know, Lincoln used emergency to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

Woodrow Wilson used emergency to arrest people that spoke out against the war. FDR used emergency to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans deny them free speech and the right to travel. And George W. Bush used emergency to justify the patriot act. and its universal surveillance in the days and weeks and months following 9-11. It's still with us 25 years later. And, of course, the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no such thing as emergency under the Constitution. There are no emergency powers that the government acquires.

How come the – I mean, what would it take for the Congress to actually push back on these emergency statements by any president? But let's say a couple months from now, the Trump administration, if he is any remaining emergency rules in place, say, I don't know, after January 20th, what can the Congress do to rainy men? That presumes that we have a Congress. I heard a one-liner that somebody sent me earlier today. We don't have a Congress. We have a Knesset 2.0.

Oh, no. Well, then that will answer my question. They're not going to do anything about it. Yeah, this is, we're in some strange times, really. I think I have a sense that, and I think everybody does really, that things are accelerating rapidly. And, you know, there seems to be a sense maybe that, you know, all these things burning at one time, you know, there's their sense of control. But I do think there's something behind it. I think the disruption of energy, particularly, particularly for Europe. For us, yeah, it's a disruption, high cost, it's going to cramp the economy. But Europe has much worse energy problem right now. And it seems like nothing that's going on in the world is helping the European energy situation. And I'm not saying the EU hasn't caused a lot of this, but it's almost like the U.S. has recognized a European weakness and that we ourselves are exploiting this. And I mean, I thought this even at the time that we blew up Nord Stream, you know, that what was that about?

well to isolate, you know, European buyers from Russian energy. And I get that. But it seems like there's actually a long plan of some sort to, I don't know what. I don't know. I guess Trump wants to go out as the president that started World War III. They usually start over energy and resources, I think, at some level. Chris, do we have the clip of President Putin from which the The Washington Post article was based while he looks for it. This is President Putin yesterday manifesting his awareness of the role of European elites in the special military operation in their support of Ukraine. You tell me, Colonel Kodkowski, if you think President Putin, A, isn't onto something, and B. is losing his patience.

Chris, I think that everything that is happening in Europe as a whole is the result of systemic mistakes by the so-called West. We said many times that NATO's Eastwood expansion was unacceptable to us. Eventually, they reached Ukraine. This ultimately became the real root cause of today's tragic events in Ukraine. The Western globalist elites are to blame for this. Now they are saying that they are thinking about how to deploy troops on the territory of Ukraine.

This means war with Russia. As I understand it, the citizens of European countries understand what is happening. This means war with Russia. Yesterday the Polish foreign minister said that Poland would beat Russia in a war. I mean, he's out of his mind. I'm not wishing this at all. But a war between Poland and Russia, Warsaw would cease to exist in about two days. Yeah, that's that's right.

And the willingness, and you know, that guy, the foreign minister, married to Applebaum, an American, he's, you know, he's willing to sacrifice Poland for some greater agenda, which is obviously not well communicated to the people of Europe, and it's not well understood by anybody. And I think this fits into what Putin is saying about the West, the so-called West, the powers that are leveraging our policy, Knesset and Knesset 2.0, you know, we are aiming for a major war and sacrificing, willing to sacrifice a great number of countries and economic sectors to get that war. And honestly, you know, I think, you know, when Bessent says, oh, we're going to grow our way out of the 40, probably 40.01 trillion of debt that the United States has.

And we're going to grow our way out of that. That's really not what happens. It never happens like that. What happens is major wars come and your currency is reset. And your debts are repudiated because war has changed everything. And so it's a reset, a restart. It's the most traditional type of reset that you get in the history of the earth is a major war. So it's almost like that's what they want. They want that. And I wouldn't think that they want it, except for the elites at the same time

are talking about how great it would be if we had, I don't know, two to five billion fewer people on the planet. So in that conversation, and then you see the way we're behaving, pushing wars everywhere, aiding wars, demanding wars, you know, economic war,

everything you can think of. And of course, we've used up our conventional weapons, so what better entry point would we have for nuclear weapons, right? Because we've got this need for war. And we, the people, don't have a need for war. We never do. No people have the need for war. It's the government's that do that. The states do that. And it's a, I mean, you can study it objectively from a historical perspective, but when you're living through it, like we are right now, it's, it is a little, disconcerting, I think, to think about what our government might be willing to do in order

not to pay their debt, you know, in order not to be held accountable for their crimes against their own people. Are you concerned, as concerned as I am about the Trump administration suppression of the freedom of speech? I mean, they're going after a local station. owned by ABC News because of what Jimmy Kimmel says at 1130 at night. They are trying to take funds away from, I don't think there should be federal aid to education to begin with, because it's not in the Constitution. But they have these contracts in places like Harvard,

hire a lot of high-end MD PhD researchers, and they get grants, and now the government is threatening to pull those grants back because Harvard allows people to stand in Harvard Square and utter the unthinkable, free Palestine. So the government wants to punish people and entities and corporations because of their speech. Yeah.

Well, you know, this is inevitable, really. As our country has, as United States has become more socialist, right? We have more federal money being recycled into the economy to favored recipients, right? like Harvard, like higher education, because it's like good for the people if we have money to give to Harvard, right? So it's all justified. But when you take somebody's money, there's a contract, whether it is a spoken contract or an unspoken contract. And part of that is, yeah, you want federal money?

It's controlled by politicians. It's not controlled by the people. They don't control it. We can't even get our Congress people to enforce the Constitution, which is very clear, and we can't get them to do that. So no, if you take government money, you will do what they say or they will cancel it. And I think we saw this a little bit when we had the congressman, was he a congressman or a senator from Arizona, former military guy, astronaut or something. And he said something that headsets didn't like.

And they said, we're going to look into how we can eliminate his retirement check because he had spent a career. I don't know if it was reserves or active duty. but, you know, they're targeting the money that was promised them. But again, when you sell part of your soul because you want free money from the government, you have to expect that they're going to at some point ask you to behave properly in the government's interest. And again, this is not the constitutional government. This is not in the interest of the republic. This is our whatever it is you can call our government.

But it's certainly unconstitutional and extra constitutional. But yeah, this is very logical. And more of these requests for compliance if you're taking government money will come. And it's both sides, both the wealthy at Harvard, you know, that level of educational elite. But it also is the same with the people on the government food cards, the, you know, the welfare. And every people are very popular. It's a popular idea amongst the rest of America. that if you get, you know, food credits or welfare credits that you should work, right?

It sounds very, it sounds very useful. Like, hey, of course, you're taking government money. You should do this. You should do that. Because you're taking government money, you do what we tell you. Okay. That's all this is. It's a thug world.

And it is part and parcel of a socialist economy, which we have here in the United States. So if you listen to President Trump last week at Dallas, This is so-called Republican midterm convention. I actually felt sorry for him. If he can't fill an arena in Dallas, Texas, boy, this midterm does not look good for him. All right, it was summertime. It was August. It was Labor Day.

But that arena was quarter empty. But anyway, he railed and ranted against socialism. Then he said, if Republicans win, we'll give each of you a check for. for $5,000. We'll become socialist if the Republicans win. Did he realize what he was saying in the same paragraph? No, no, no, he doesn't. And also, I think, while I think a lot of people probably didn't take it that way, I think a lot of other people said, wait a minute, 5,000 is promised. What about the 2000 and the 1,000 that he already promised for the tariff repay and all this? So I don't think people believed him.

I think his credibility was shot even more just when he said, made that statement. But yeah, I think Trump increasingly, you know, Trump is a, you know, he's a person full of energy. You know, you want to watch what he does all the time and it's very interesting. But increasingly it looks like Trump's not in control. And it may not be because he's losing his mind, although I would grant that that's very possible. But you know, some of the stuff he's saying is he really is flustered. I think the forces that are around him, and we know who those forces are for the most part, are really, I think they're willing to sacrifice him, you know,

and to basically use him until he's used up, which may be as soon as this fall, and then cast him away. So and I don't think he thought that. I think when, but you know, it's like it's like I just said with taking federal money. If you take Israeli money to get elected, then, you know, there's a tradeoff there. You have to deliver. And it's, you know, I think this is a bad situation that Trump's in. Do you think he noticed that he wasn't filling a theater or a stadium?

I'm sure he notices that. That's a big deal. Yeah, for him. He's probably more interested in that than anything. Just knowing him, because, you know, I've been with him on television a number of times on one of my prior lives, he'll be saying to the people in charge of the cameraman, you keep the cameras away from over there where the empty seats are. But, of course, he wasn't able to do that. Colonel, this is your field now, the Air Force.

Colonel Wilkison and I discussed this earlier. I had gotten a tip on it, and he had never heard of it. And now the Washington Post is reporting it. The Trump administration has served notice to Congress that it plans to sell. And these numbers are unbelievable, colonel, 40,000, 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. What? Yeah, and Congress, of course, has the opportunity to negate this. I know that they will because of the lobby supporting their campaigns.

I'm going to read this now. From the Washington Post. Breaking news, the Trump administration is preparing a $2.8 billion sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The largest single sale of the controversy of munitions in recent years, a U.S. official told the Post. The $2.8 billion package, which would be purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars, includes 40,000 bombs that weigh two-point-eight billion. 2,000 pounds each. Wow. According to Larry Wilkerson, you may know this as well, the Israelis don't have the aircraft

with which to carry and dispatch a 2,000 pound bomb. So I guess we'll be dropping those bombs for them. Well, it'll be part of the delivery of the delivery details of the contract. Yeah, here's the bombs the taxpayer bought for you, and then here we're going to deliver them. Where would you like these bombs delivered, Israel? And then Netanyahu or one of the other guys that is in charge of Israel will tell us where they'd like those bombs delivered. That doesn't sound very difficult. Does it sound normal to you?

To me, it sounds like an enormous amount. Yeah, that is, I mean, I can't do the math in my head, but if you look at the nuclear equivalent of 40,000, 2,000-pound bombs, That's pretty significant. And why would Israel need those? Like you said, since they can't, they don't have the aircraft to drop those. So 20,000 of them have something called an MK84. And here's what the Washington Post says about the MK84. A phrase with which I'm unfamiliar.

Perhaps you know it from your Air Force days. It sounds as though it's something relatively recent. Among the most destructive munitions in the Western military arsenals, an MK84 explosion sends metal fragments in every direction for thousands of feet can rip through metal and thick concrete and often creates large craters in the earth. This is used to slaughter indiscriminately large numbers of human beings. Yep, yep, which is what we're both doing. Both countries, the United States and Israel are doing that. Increasingly, the United States does that. You know, we've targeted, what we've done just in Iran alone in the past five months reveals, I think, that we've adopted Israeli targeting practices, which are basically you go after whatever you want.

And if you kill kids, we chalk it up to a, we count the deaths as if they were adults, as if they were, bad guys. And then we chalk it up to kind of a psychological warfare. You know, we just, it's a morale buster in addition to destruction of lives and targets. So we've adopted that. I think that's clear. Yeah, I don't know what this means, but something clearly not very good. It's also weird that, because, you know, we don't just make up the stuff that we're going to sell Israel on our own, right? Israel puts in their order. And we, quickly fill that order. So, yeah, I would like to know what the Israeli papers are saying about that particular, this plan.

I wonder if Congress will have the fortitude to block it. I mean, that's probably a fanciful wondering on my part, given the number of members of Congress who were financed by APEC. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to say, I think, maybe it depends on the confidence that will evolve as we get closer to the election, that it won't be a, you know, if the Democrats, they see that anti-AAPC or non-Israel supporters, at least in terms of Zionism and the war, are doing well in the election. So the Democratic Party, if it thinks maybe it will prevail in enough numbers that it can afford to be honorable and resist APEC, which would be shocking if they would be able to do that.

But if they think they can do that, maybe they'll postpone the vote if they can. Maybe it'll be a cause for discussion. And, you know, it can help make Trump look bad because obviously this means more war is coming, not less, especially when they talk about how I don't think the Israelis can deliver those weapons, which means now we've, we're, we're. We're. We're, we're We're giving them weapons. They're going to pay for them, but then we're going to, our end of the deals will also deliver them in real time on various targets. So that means, well, look, integration of the IDF with the Pentagon.

It's already mostly happened. So this is the continuing trend, really. I love chatting with you, even if the subject is gloom and doom and death and destruction. but thank you for your insight, Karen. It's always a pleasure, my dear friend. You look so bright and youthful and cheerful, and it's a joy to be able to be with you, even if it's just through the monitor.

I'll see you soon, Karen. Thank you, all the best. Okay, thank you, Judge. Sure. If you're watching us live coming up in 16 minutes at 3.45 on all of this, 2,000-pound bombs, impeaching Pete to Hegg-Seth,

abandoning Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump painted in a corner out of which he cannot get Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom.