Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : DEA Drug Gangsters; Netanyahu's Fears.

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Max Blumenthal : DEA Drug Gangsters; Netanyahu's Fears.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, December 10th, 2025 Max. Blumenthal joins us now. My dear friend, Max, thank you for your time and thank you for accommodating my schedule. Hara-Retz is reporting in the past couple of hours that President Herzog has directed his internal legal team to begin crafting a legal basis. to grant Prime Minister Netanyahu a pardon without requiring remorse, without requiring an admission of guilt, without requiring that he leave office,

all of which would be unprecedented, as I understand it, in the history of Israeli presidential pardons. Can you weigh in on this? Well, it's for sure Netanyahu is consistent. Netanyahu is concerned about being convicted. There are so many corruption scandals that have been exposed for years, and it makes him frightful about leaving office

because if he leaves office, he returns to trial. These trials are endless, and just the sheer process of sitting through the trials for Netanyahu is agonizing as he's entering the winter of his life. But there's a lot there. I mean, by U.S. standards, it looks like nothing compared to what Donald Trump is doing. And that's sort of his argument. But there is a lot there, and there is clearly enough to convict him with, including audio tapes, receipts,

testimony from former associates, including Miriam Adelson, who testified against him with her late husband, Sheldon Adelson. And this makes it likely that Netanyahu could start a campaign, a military campaign in Lebanon, to supposedly disarm Hezbollah because every time he's launched a new military campaign, it delays these court proceedings. Meanwhile, Isaac Herzog, the president, has to approve of the pardon and a former associate of Herzog from the Labor Party is now alleging that Herzog has become the subject of some kind of malign influence that he will expose if Herzog pardons Netanyahu that Herzog sort of in on like on the take from someone and he says that this will be so damaging to Herzog that it could destroy his career there are other convictions

Netanyahu fears there's the ICC warrant which has complicated Netanyahu's life and has been a factor in the complete destruction of Eurovision which is the world's leading singing contest in Europe. You know, if you're in Europe during a Eurovision contest, like everyone under 50 pauses their lives to watch this competition where each country gets to participate with its top rising pop stars. And for some reason, Israel participates, even though it's not a part of Europe, but it just happens to have a large population of Euro trash. And so they were allowed to participate after committing genocide. And no less than three countries have already pulled out. Major countries, Spain, Netherlands. I think Iceland has pulled out. Iceland always does

very well. This relates to the ICC warrant, and Israel is working to destroy the life of the ICC prosecutor, including through sexual blackmail, a time-tested Mossad tactic. After Kareem Khan, the ICC prosecutor issued this warrant, something strange crept into his life, and suddenly there were one or two accusers claiming that he had sexually harassed them. They remain anonymous. We know very little about them. It reminds me of what happened to Julian Assange when he started to emerge as a threat to the U.S. government and U.S. empire when he started to be accused of various sex crimes, which have now been, he's completely exonerated from.

And this led to him being to the initial. warrant for his arrest, which caused him to flee to the Ecuadorian embassy. So Israel's, I mean, Netanyahu is fighting on all fronts to try to avoid going to prison. But I think the ICC warrant is much more significant than something within Israel where there's really no accountability for any of the crimes we witnessed over the past two years, let alone Netanyahu's corruption trials. How startling did you find from your research that a former high-ranking official of the American Drug Enforcement Administration has now been indicted for money laundering and drug distribution. You almost can't say it with a straight face.

Well, the journalist who's done the best work on this is named Jack Paulson, and everyone should read his substack site, All Source Intelligence. He's breaking all kinds of stories about intelligence intrigues, kind of in the tradition of WikiLeaks. And after this indictment dropped. I learned from Jack the identities of those who were indicted. They were Paul Campo of Oakton, Virginia, which is a leafy suburb of Northern Virginia, very democratic area, and Robert Sensi, who is a veteran CIA operative who's been involved in so many shady CIA activities, going back to the time he was initially recruited when he was kind of a fixer, for the Kuwaiti royal family, he was apparently involved in the October surprise in 1980

and testified or just detailed what happened to journalists. Afterwards, he's been rung up for multimillion-dollar frauds to purchase military-grade helicopters for certain Middle East countries in the past. And now these two had gotten involved with Mexico's Halisco. new generation cartel in a $12 million scheme to launder money and procure drones and various explosives for this cartel. Now, the thing is the way they were caught was through a confidential informant and given all their experience, Paul Campo, for example, being the top finance guy at the DEA for many years throughout the Obama administration, they should have known that

they were being duped, but they weren't, and they agreed to participate in this scheme. But through their participation revealed that they had been involved in various schemes, alleged schemes with drug cartels. And this is the latest illustration of the long-running, close, collaborative relationship between U.S. intelligence, specifically the CIA and drug traffickers. Going back to, according to CIA historian Tim Wiener, back to 1947, and we've talked about it, Judge, here. I mean, I can go on and on about the collaboration.

between the U.S. government and drug cartels. But I mean, during the Obama era, when Paul Campo was in charge of supposedly fighting money laundering for the DEA, there was this fast and furious operation where the DEA was actually supplying Mexican drug cartels with high-powered U.S. weapons, supposedly to track the weapons. But one of the Mexican cartel leaders who was extradited to the U.S. testified in U.S. court that the DEA had cut a secret deal with the Sinaloa cartel to arm them in order to take out other cartels, sort of proxy war style. I mean, I could go on for 45 minutes, but you have a Newsmax appearance. This fellow Campo and the other fellow Sensei, the evidence of their guilt is so overwhelming

that this morning, I just read a transcript of it, Max. a federal judge denied them bail. I mean, this is almost unheard of that people with their backgrounds, their connections in law enforcement, their connections in the intelligence community, their roots in the community would be denied bail by a federal judge, but that's what happened. They're sitting a few blocks from me in the Metropolitan Correction Center, the same place where Jeffrey Epstein breathed his last. Well, Robert Sensi, I mean, that guy is a trove of secrets and I would love to be able to pick his brain and interview him if he doesn't get Epstein. Paul Campo, this guy knew how to exploit the U.S. financial system because he was one

of the top officials in charge of supposedly protecting it. And just another point, the DEA is under new Trumpist leadership under Terry Cole and these were Obama era officials. So perhaps this was a, there was a political angle to this bust. Can the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted of one of the largest conspiracies in the history of the United States to export to the U.S. 400 tons of cocaine, who was sentenced to 45 years in jail, the prosecutor in that case was a guy named Amel Beauvais, who eventually became Donald Trump's personal lawyer and now sits on the 13th Circuit Court of Appeals, the court, are just below the Supreme Court of the United States. He was just pardoned by Trump, notwithstanding all of Trump's yelling and screaming about we have to go after the drug people. Can this former president of Honduras go back to Honduras? You can go back. The current government will have him arrested because Honduras is under

the control of the Libre Party, which is a sort of center-left, Democratic Party that Donald Trump wants to oust. So you brought up Emil Beauvais, top Trump loyalist in the federal judiciary. He's had to basically keep his head down and say nothing about this pardon because this pardon was very important for geostrategic reasons and reasons of just sheer plunder and profit for top Trump associates who are really running this administration. And this is extremely humiliating for Emil Beauvais. I mean, I could criticize him endlessly,

but his indictment of Juan Orlando Hernandez was excellent and extremely detailed. We covered it at the time at the gray zone. It's shocking. It's not just shipping drugs to the US. It's mass murder across Honduras, destabilizing his own country, institutionalizing the drug trade,

taking the concept of the cartel beyond the corporation into the transformation of a kind of federal constitutional republic into a drug trafficking organization. That's what Juan Orlando did. And today the conspiracy continues. Trump's associates are conspiring with Juan Orlando's national party to rig the Honduran election which just took place. The reason they had to pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez was number one to clean up the image of the national party, which had been completely tainted through his presidency and the corruption. And number two, to embolden the MS-13 cartels, which still hold substantial power in the streets of Honduras during this election

that just took place. After Trump threatened the Honduran public with destroying their economy unless they elected Tito Asforah, who is one Orlando's successor from the National Party, 900 emergency calls were made by common Honduran citizens claiming they had been threatened with death by MS-13 gang members if they did not vote for Asphora. So this is what's happening on the ground and it corresponds with the Trumpist conspiracy to rig the election. That's in addition to the fact that 15% of ballots have been found to be invalid or contain irregularities. And the Central Election Council has not been able to remediate these ballots or explain this at all. And so the ruling party in Honduras, which officially lost the election, is invalidating election results

as the result of this interference by cartels and Trump. And I haven't even gotten to the moneymen around Trump and what their interest is in Honduras. So I can't, if I ask you who won the election, it is not knowable at this point because of the 15% invalid ballots. I think the interesting part is that the Libre Party, which Trump and the gusano industrial complex in South Florida is denouncing as communists, they're not even claiming victory. They're saying that another candidate named Salvador Nasrallah, who's a very popular broadcaster, won, and he was running neck and neck with us for a, he's a pro-U.S. candidate, but they're saying that he won and the election was stolen from him, and it very likely was by Trump and his associate.

in Honduras through intimidation threats, and there's this other little angle, which I think, you know, it really cuts to the heart of the corruption that defines Donald Trump's golden age or gelded age. It's it's this little island off Honduras called Roatan, which is sort of a popular vacation place. And under Juan Orlando Hernandez, they tried to turn it into a sovereign economic zone called Prospera, which, you know, many. libertarians might say, oh, that sounds good, but it just became a place from a zone of money laundering, of cartel corruption. And so the following government that came in under Ziamara Castro began to shut it down. And now Prospera, the corporation, is suing the Honduran government

for $10 billion, which is one-third of its entire GDP. And who's invested in Prospera? Mark Andresen and Peter Thiel are the top investors, and they're also two of the top funders of Trump Incorporated. And they've been using figures like Roger Stone as their hitmen. And Juan Orlando Hernandez personally thanked Roger Stone, as well as Matt Gates, who's hosting Juan Orlando tonight on One American News for helping get him pardoned. Oh, my goodness. I actually brought it up in my interview with Matt Gates last night. We posted it at our YouTube channel at the gray zone. We also have a really interesting interview at the gray zone

with the deputy foreign minister of Honduras, Herardo Torres, conducted by our editor, Wyatt Reed, and he really lays out what's going on on the ground there. This is, you know, really the essence of how Trump operates. He will seek to completely to topple a government in the Western Hemisphere if some of his cronies have a profit interest there. And that's the same thing that's happening in Venezuela. Is this independent of Marco Rubio's mania about all things Latin? Well, that's another kind of corresponding interest. There's a confluence of interest here.

You have the big tech AI warlords who want in on this sovereign economic zone. I mean, this is part of Peter Thiel's longstanding vision. And then you have the Gusano industrial complex of Maria Elvira Salazar, Marco Rubio, So Carlos Imenes in South Florida, they see this through a purely ideological lens. Honduras has, while it's not completely in line with Cuba, it's not like a socialist government. It's more social democratic, sort of soft left. They have defended the sovereignty of Venezuela at various points. And Honduras strategically is highly significant to the U.S.

It's a very large landmass with multiple borders, with two coasts. and the largest U.S. base, the Soto-Kano-Pomerola Air Base. And so for them, it's important to have a right-wing pro-U.S. government that does whatever the U.S. wants in seizing the ultimate prize, which is Cuba. Marco Rubio wants to come back to Cuba on the back of a white horse or, I don't know, a carnival cruise line ship. We're going to play a clip for you from the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. I know you want to comment on it. It's rather sickening, but we'll play it.

Chris, the daughter of Mrs. Machado. My generation was born in a vibrant democracy, and we took it for granted. We assumed freedom was a permanent as the air we breathed. We cherished our rights, but we forgot our duties. I was raised by a father whose life's work, building, creating, serving, taught me that loving a country meant assuming responsibility for its future. By the time we recognized how fragile our institutions had become, a man who had once led a military coup to overthrow democracy,

overthrow democracy was elected precedent. Many thought charisma could substitute the rule of law. From 1991 onward, the regime dismantled our democracy, violating the Constitution, falsifying our history, corrupting the military, purgent independent judges, censoring the press, manipulating elections, persecuting dissent, and ravaging our extraordinary biodiversity. Where to start?

This is the daughter of the CIA Mossad asset who was, who the Nobel Peace Prize people were manipulated into awarding the Nobel Peace Prize. Why did Mashada herself not go there? Why did you send the daughter? And what the hell is the daughter talking about? Biodiversity. I mean, that's really what it all comes down to, isn't it? I wish I knew it. I'm afraid to ask you what that is. This is the nail in the coffin for the Nobel Prize in its committee, which is given awards to Barack Obama before he made multiple wars and expanded the U.S. battlefield to the entire globe through the drone warfare campaign, which is now inspiring Donald Trump.

It is an absurd speech denouncing a military coup. Hugo Chavez attempting within the military, where he was a high-ranking officer, to overthrow a deeply unpopular government in an extremely popular rebellion. On behalf of this, this is the daughter of someone who has staged multiple military coups that failed on behalf of multinational corporations. starting in 2002 when she signed the Carmona Decree, which throughout the popularly elected Hugo Chavez briefly until people marched on Mira Flores Palace and throughout the coup plotters.

I watched Maria Carina Machado personally. Like I was standing right next to her when she tried to take over a military base in the middle of Caracas with some rioters. This would never be allowed in the United States. Maria Carina Machado is publicly called on the apartheid government of Israel in a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu to militarily invade Venezuela to install her into power. She is called for the U.S. military to stage, in her words,

a Libya-style intervention in Venezuela. She has supported Trump's boat strikes, which have killed many Venezuelan citizens who remain anonymous. She lured Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. and supported TPS, in addition to supporting the starvation sanctions on Venezuelans, which caused them to migrate in the first place. Then when Trump deported them to the Seacot Torture Center in El Salvador, she supported Trump selling out those citizens. She is supporting the closure of all international flights to Venezuela, placing Venezuela under siege at a time when it's citizens, regardless of what they think about Maduro,

are trying to get home to their families for Christmas. She is the ultimate traitor to Venezuela and supporter. of war on her own people, and she's being celebrated by this pathetic Nobel Prize Committee, which is exposed Norway as an imperialist scavenger and an extension of America's war machine, a completely hollow institution where her daughter is celebrating a period which Venezuelans, who are below her Waitino upper class status, look at with shame and horror. This was the neoliberal Punto Fijo period when two corporate pro-U.S. parties exchanged power in ceremonial elections in which over 40% of the Venezuelan population was disenfranchised

through complex ID schemes. This was a period when Venezuela had a 70% poverty rate, 40% extreme poverty rate, which was reduced to 10% under Hugo Chavez before the U.S. sanctions came in. This was a period when in 1989, Venezuelans rioted in the Caracas riot against IMF austerity measures being imposed on them in the military, came into the streets and mowed down hundreds of people and buried them in mass graves. And this is what she is upholding as this great period of democracy that they all have to go back to. And, you know, many people have forgotten who might be younger, but Maria Carina Machado has been explicit in her appeals to Trump. cronies. They can steal all the Venezuelan resources they want, have all the oil deals they want, and they have to pay back nothing to the Venezuelan public, which means that the poor go back to the shadows and will be disenfranchised again in a phony procedural democracy with these

institutions that are run by the U.S. And that'll be a wrap. The problem is there is a popular movement in Venezuela that is still rejecting this. And Donald Trump doesn't know what to do. after he wages a few supposedly targeted airstrikes to dislodge millions of people. And this crazy lady, not the daughter, the mother, is the one that Trump wants to install after his CIA and his military supposedly kidnapped, opposed, kill, remove, whatever, Nicolas Maduro. Yeah. I mean, imagine thinking that you could be seen as credible and a popular leader after you come into power in your country

through a foreign military intervention, which kills thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of your countrymen and women? I don't think she will be accepted. How is that democracy? The United States right now under Trump, but historically,

has been the world's greatest dictator attempting to topple governments and political systems that don't support, that don't provide what it's multinational corporations like ExxonMobil demand. In Venezuela today, the government is happy to sign win-win deals with U.S. oil companies. It's currently involved with Chevron, letting Chevron have drilling rights. The problem is those oil companies will be our minority partners, according to the Venezuelan

constitution. And the majority of profit goes through Pede Vesa, which is the state. oil company, which is controlled by the government and which is the engine of social programs, which provide benefits to, for example, Venezuelan farmers, Campesinos who are marching today in support of their government because before the Chavez era, they were much poorer. So the U.S. companies, they want 100 percent control. They want control of the coastline. They want control of the minerals and they don't want to pay anything back into the government. And that's what Maria Karina Machado has promised them. She is the most radical leader of an opposition whose leadership

has been discredited through the fake presidency of Juan Guaido and various other failed schemes. She's all that's left. But there has been a kind of patriotic opposition to Chavismo, which has existed in Venezuela, has won governorships. One figure I would point to is named Henry Falcone, and he was a governor in Venezuela. There were others like him. And in 2018, when he sought to run for president, the United States threatened to sanction him. Why would they threaten to sanction someone who isn't with Maduro, who's running against Maduro? It's because Falcone opposed U.S. sanctions, opposed the coups, and wanted to work within the preexisting system. And so they had to freeze them out to make way for radical coup-plotting warmongers like Machado.

And this coronation of Machado with the Nobel Prize total is like, the final discrediting of the rules-based order, which supported the genocide in Gaza every step of the way. And I don't think they see how the rest of the world views them with utter contempt and disgust. Max, I could talk to you about this all day, but I have another commitment. Your reporting is so deep, so thorough, so profound, and so courageous. Thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you, Judge. All the best. My regards to your family. hope we can see you again next week. Thanks a lot, Judge. Of course. Coming up tomorrow Thursday, at 8 in the morning, Phil Giraldi, at 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor, at 2 in the

afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, at 3 in the afternoon from wherever he is, Pepe Escobar, at 4 in the afternoon, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.