Judging Freedom - MAX Blumenthal: Restrained at Dulles International for Speech!

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

MAX Blumenthal: Restrained at Dulles International for Speech!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 Thursday, February 27th, 2025. Max Blumenthal joins us now. Max, as always, my dear friend, welcome here. You and Anya and your child recently returned from a trip to Nicaragua and you landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, United States of America. The listeners and viewers will understand why I'm referring to it that way in a few seconds. What happened to you there? Something that the Dulles brothers probably would have been proud of. As I got off a plane from San Salvador, El Salvador, I was passing through there from Nicaragua and coming from a country that is on the U.S. regime change hit list, but where I participated in absolutely zero political activities. I was just basically on vacation with my family for a

little while just getting out of an unusually harsh winter. I was intercepted before entering the customs line by customs and border protection agent, or agent who identified himself with that agency, just called out my name, Mr. Blumenthal, and then proceeded to lead me down a long hallway. As we were passing down that hallway, he said, I caught your latest appearance on Judge Napolito, mispronouncing your name, but indicating that Big Brother is a part of your audience, and then led me into a cavernous secondary screening room, stood across a metal desk from me, placed a questionnaire on the desk asking me for some information that seemed fairly basic. I had no problem providing about my itinerary and my contact details, which I was not obligated to do. I mean, you don't have to do that. Then he flipped it over and began playing some sort of surveillance game with me,

asking me if I knew any of the people that he had written by hand on the back of the sheet. Most of the names, it was a handful of names, not many. I could not commit all to memory. He wouldn't allow me to photograph them. Most of them were common Muslim names like Mohammed Khan. And then there were two Anglo names, Nicole Smith, which I only recognized as the late model who died under suspicious circumstances, and a name, Susan Benjamin, which I didn't immediately recognize. After I said,, don't think I know who those are. And, you know, he started, he kept peppering me with basic questions, questions about, you know, my global entry, things like that. And I basically tired of suggested I should pat him on the back for letting me cut ahead of everyone else in line at customs. And while I was waiting for our bags, my wife and frequent Judge Napolito contributor Anya Paril, presented me with a disturbing realization. She began

Googling some of the names that were on this list. And one of them, Susan Benjamin, turned out to be the birth name of Medea Benjamin, who is well-known, even famous as one of the co-founders of Code Pink. She's one of the most renowned anti-war activists in the world. Right. And so I contacted her the next day and said, Medea, here's what happened. She said she had been harassed constantly by the feds every time she came back in the country. And then it stopped after she filed a series of complaints. But now she expects it to start happening again. So I still don't know exactly why this happened to me. A number of anti-war activists and journalists, travelers were treated on the same day or the day

before to extended interrogations by Customs and Border Protection because they had come from the funeral for late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, but I wasn't coming from there. They weren't interested in my trip to Nicaragua. And most of the names on this list were Muslim names and Medea Benjamin is, you know, on the front lines of the Palestine Solidarity Movement. So my suspicion is this has something to do with Israel-Palestine. Then there are other questions like, is this a flag from the Trump administration or is it a flag from the leftover from the Biden administration? Because this is my first international trip since Trump came in. I don't have answers. I can only speculate, but it certainly was an act of harassment, and it certainly related to my political views.

Have you heard from anybody in the government? Well, when did this happen? Earlier this week? Yeah, it happened about 72 hours ago. Okay. Have you heard from anybody in the government since then? I have not. Do you have any reason to believe that it is because of your exercise of the freedom of speech here on Judging Freedom on the gray zone, which you created and elsewhere? Well, only in a general sense.

It clearly related to my political views. And I was asked, or your program was mentioned specifically. I asked the agent, what did you think? And he deflected and did not want to volunteer an opinion. He might've been just trying to warm me up. And another thing he said to me was, this is just a friendly discussion. You're not a target of anything. Obviously, it's never friendly when you're being questioned about potentially criminal matters, not being accused of it outside of a constitutional process without a lawyer present. And so I can't be specific, but generally speaking, it's about the political views that I express in public. And just to be sure, everything I do is public. I'm a journalist. I'm transparent about my views. And had I participated in political activities in

Nicaragua, it would have been public. I would have said I was at this ceremony or I interviewed this politician. Nothing is taking place secretly. But anyway, shout out to the FBI right now. I hope you all are enjoying this episode. I hope you learned something. And I hope you open your mind a little bit. I think you're a hero, Max, and you've known that I've felt that way for a long time. And this is another example of it. I wonder what would have happened if you had asserted your constitutional right to remain silent? Might you and Anya still

be there? Well, perhaps I should have. There was a red line I wasn't going to cross, but I didn't reach what I thought was the red line. But to anyone who's watching this, the best course of action is always to assert your constitutional right to remain silent. The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that the police and authorities inside the U.S. are allowed to lie to you in order to elicit a criminal confession. The ACLU has, I think, forced the government into allowing any traveler into the United States after a certain period of time. So the U.S. government is not allowed to prevent you from entering your country where you are a citizen and you have constitutional protections. So it could have been that I would have been delayed. We arrived at around 3 a.m. As you mentioned, I had a small child with me and we had been on a long flight. So I didn't

want to get out of there quickly. And they could have held us in what would have been a kind of a form of abuse. But they can't force you to ask, answer questions without a warrant or a subpoena, and they can't not let you back in your country. So it's really just a waiting game. I don't think they can even restrain you. You know, I think you were free to leave. This would have upset them immeasurably, but without an arrest warrant, you're, you're free to leave. That is at least the law. The government is notorious for not following the law. You really risk their wrath. We shouldn't have to worry about the government's wrath, but you risk their wrath when you assert your constitutional rights. But the rights are to remain silent and without an arrest warrant to leave. Well, I know of several U.S. activists who've had

FBI agents show up at their front door in recent months asking questions about seemingly random Muslim names about Iran. Many of them had been to Iran and just simply had traveled there. And they told the FBI that they did not wish to answer any questions and the agents went away because there was no warrant. None of them had been accused of any crime and that was the proper procedure. Others like to hold forth and have cathartic exchanges with federal agents. And, you know, I guess if you have nothing to hide, then you can feel free to get, get it all off your chest.

But I don't think that's wise because. No, it's not wise. The government can take innocuous, innocent statements out of context and twist them in ways that can appeal to certain authorities and commence investigations against you and you just don't want to go there. Did they, do you know if they reached out to anybody else, stopped anybody else on your flight? There was a man who was, who I didn't know, who was seated in the waiting area in the secondary screening room but

that's that seemed pretty standard i i i i i can't say um but again i don't it didn't seem like they were interested in did you know did they know that the baby is your child and that the woman with you is your wife and they were holding up a family with a baby at three in the morning? They did. They asked me that question and I confirmed it. Wow. You're courageous to have written the piece that you wrote, including their butchering of my last name, which of course has gotten a lot of jokes. Let's transition to the latest in Israel. What is the evidence, These two young boys, Israeli boys, the ones with red hair whose bodies were returned, and then the mother's body was eventually returned. Is there evidence that they were killed by Israeli fire? Well, the forensic evidence is in the hands of the Israelis because they have the bodies. And Gaza being under siege, being under bombardment, it's very difficult for them to conduct a thorough forensic investigation. And Israel is lying. It appears to me they're lying about the nature of the deaths of Kaffir and Ariel Bibas and Shiri Bibas, their mother. These were two young boys and a mother who were taken on October 7th by a small, lesser-known faction known as the Mujahideen Brigades. According to the field commander of the Mujahideen Brigades, in an interview during the

exchange of the bodies, Shiri Bibas was taken because she was a veteran of Israel's notorious Unit 8200 Surveillance Division and was therefore seen as a combatant. Her children went with her out of, in the commander's words, compassion for her because presumably she had asked not to abandon them when she was taken, and that they were then cared for according to Islamic law. Hamas, which implies that they tried to give them the best treatment possible while they were being held against their will. Hamas announced in November 2023 that those three members of the Bibas family were killed in an Israeli airstrike. And I can go through the whole history of Israel killing hostages or captives in the Gaza Strip. Dozens have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. But it was Yarden Bibas, the husband of Shiri and the father of these two boys, who announced in captivity in a video pleading for Israel to accept Hamas's offer to release these bodies in December that they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The father said that. Now, you can say he was being coerced and he was held hostage, so the video is worthless. But Israel rejected the deal to allow them to come out, which would have extended the humanitarian pause in December 2023 in which various captives and prisoners were being exchanged. Why did they do that? It's obvious now because of the way Netanyahu is exploiting their deaths and propagandizing in order to point the finger at Hamas and derail the current ceasefire deal. They kept the Israeli public in suspense, made the Israeli public think they were alive, never accepted Hamas's word that they were dead, and of course refused to accept the bodies. And then at the last minute during the ceasefire, Netanyahu unleashes the public's rage and anger,

leading to even the Empire State Building being lit up orange in honor of the Bibis children, the Empire State Building's owned by a Zionist billionaire. And the whole point of it is to trigger public outrage, elicit sympathy for Israel, which killed 18,000 small children. And all evidence, as we laid out at the Gray Zone in a detailed article, I think it's the most thorough article in English featuring analysis from an independent Israeli researcher. All evidence points to Israel having killed this family in an airstrike as it did so many others. According to Israeli sociologist Yigal Levy in the Israeli publication Haaretz, the government's decision to attack Gaza despite the presence of hostages in the bomb sites can be considered an extension of the Hannibal directive. According to

Noam Dan, who is the niece of a hostage named Ofer Calderon, they are carrying out a Hannibal procedure on us. My family, my prime minister, my defense minister are carrying out operations on my family, on citizens who were kidnapped from their homes, a Hannibal procedure. According to Noah Argomani, who is a former hostage, who testified at the United Nations on behalf of the Israeli delegation, Israel killed two hostages who she was with and wounded her in an airstrike. She had shrapnel in her head. One of them was named Yossi Sharabi. According to Maya Sherman, who is the mother of an Israeli soldier taken captive in Gaza, Ron Sherman, her son was gassed to death in a tunnel by Israeli soldiers, in her words,

like Auschwitz. And I could go on and on and on. Does the Israeli public understand that this stuff has happened? No. Netanyahu is lying and deluding them? No, they are the most propagandized population on the planet with the American public being probably number two. I don't know. Germans are pretty propagandized. But no, they don't generally understand it. But what's revealing here, and I think the dead giveaway that Netanyahu and his cronies are lying, is the reaction of the Bibas family. They have issued a cease and desist order through lawyers threatening to sue Netanyahu and his inner circle for exploiting the deaths of the family. And the sister-in-law of Shiri Beavis explicitly told Netanyahu, shut up. Why are they doing that? Well, they're not confirming what Yarden Beavis,

the father, said in captivity, which was that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but they are rejecting Netanyahu's lie that these children were strangled methodically by Hamas militants, which would make no sense because why would you strangle collateral that you could use to get your own prisoners out? It makes absolutely no sense. So the family seems to be sending the signal that Netanyahu is lying. And there is a segment of the public that's out there protesting for the release of the rest of the captives and keeping the ceasefire deal going that doesn't believe Netanyahu. But by and large, the Zionist world believes that Hamas are just a bunch of

savages who like to kill children for fun and that they actually did behead 40 babies on October 7th. Not only does Netanyahu lie, he also jokes about mass murder. Here he is two days ago, and now he's talking about expelling the Syrian military from a portion of Syria. And then he cracks what he thinks is a joke about people killed by exploding beepers in their pockets. I don't know if you've seen this. Chris, cut number one. IDF forces will remain on the summit of Mount Hermon. You should really visit that place.

It's a glorious sight. Cold, but a glorious sight. And in the adjacent buffer zone, we will remain for the foreseeable future. We will not allow the presence of the HTS organization or a new Syrian army in the area south of Damascus. Southern Syria will be demilitarized. As for Iran, we crushed a large part of Iran's terror axis through a series of powerful blows which aroused the astonishment and admiration of the entire world. If you're holding beepers, don't worry about it. Don't worry. It's okay.

What kind of a moral human being could make a joke out of the slaughter of innocents? Of course, he's not a moral human being. Well, I mean, he's responsible for the slaughter of innocents. Yes. I mean, he authorized that operation at the last minute. And severely disfigured children killed medical workers. But we've just learned that the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, considered authorizing bombing the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, where hundreds of thousands of unarmed people were mourning a late leader without weapons. They were in a stadium in Beirut, and Israel instead conducted a F-16 flyover, threatening that crowd. It's just basically a terror apparatus with a parliament. And the idea that it was even considered to do that

demonstrates the impunity that Israel enjoys in Washington, along with the rest of Netanyahu's comments that they've just simply stolen Mount Hermon in violation of a 1973 UN agreement. They just stole the highest point in Syria and are setting up ski slopes there. They've stolen a large segment of southern Syria, thanks in large part to the NATO and CIA-backed regime change operation that has seen the rebranded form of Al-Qaeda take power in Damascus, which hasn't fired a single shot against Israel, but they're just taking it. And the United States has nothing to say about it. There's no problem there. Of course, the U.S. freaked out after a referendum of Crimeans voted for the annexation by Russia. The U.S. threw a tantrum at the U.N. and issued sanctions on Russia and began marching towards the Ukraine proxy war. But here, Israel is allowed to steal all that it wants.

The same government that stopped you at Dulles, the president, took an AI-generated clip. Chris, do we have that clip? No, we don't. All right. We'll play it for you. Play it for you next time. Mocking the turning of Gaza into Trump-Gaza Riviera. Was that played in Israel? Well, everyone's talking about it. It's all the rage in Israeli media. I think it's generating lots of amusement in Israel. It really needs to be seen to believe, to be understood. There are images of bearded men with women's bodies belly dancing on the ruins of Gaza. Elon Musk is throwing money, showering children on the beaches of Gaza. Elon Musk is throwing money,

showering children on the beaches of Gaza with money. There are golden coasts and buildings resembling those in Dubai rising up as Donald Trump hams it up, shirtless on the beach, toasting Netanyahu. They've taken control of the Gaza Strip after the Holocaust we've just witnessed and a golden statue of Donald Trump rises in the center of Gaza City. It is a satanic video that many commenters are describing as also kind of anti-Christian. Kind of anti-Christian in that it resembles something that the antichrist would do

wow uh and another way of looking at it is trump is normalizing the concept of ethnically cleansing the gaza strip and allowing the the u.s or israel or some joint entity to take ownership of it after its population is pushed out. That's certainly true. It can also be looked at from the point of view that Donald Trump is actually not that serious about doing it and just sees this as a propaganda mechanism. But what I would point out is that back in 2005, after the bloodstained Israeli PM Ariel Sharon disengaged Jewish-Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and placed Gaza under siege, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that Gaza must demonstrate that it will become a, let me read the exact line. The issue for the Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza,

but whether they build a decent mini state there, a Dubai on the Mediterranean. So Thomas Friedman, a liberal associated with Donald Trump's opposition now in the New York Times, was proposing that somehow Palestinians could build a kind of Trump Tower in the Jabalia refugee camp while under siege. And if they failed to do that, then they deserve to be under siege. They deserve to be bombarded. This is an idea that precedes Donald Trump. I've talked before on your program about how Netanyahu has uploaded blueprints that closely resemble Donald Trump's AI video showing the destruction of Gaza and it being transformed into a kind of Dubai on the

Mediterranean. And now Trump has normalized the idea that it has to be ethnically cleansed and placed under foreign ownership for this vision that the West has put forward to be realized. And that shows us that our leadership, our bipartisan leadership is comprehensively Nazi-like and satanic, that they would even fathom not doing this and that they've normalized it. It's sickening. I have to run, but we have to run this it. It's sickening. I have to run, but we have to run this clip. It's only about 30 seconds long. This was not made by Trump, but he posted it. Chris. Just as you described it, bright. Golden future, a brand new light. Feast and dance, the deal is done. Trump Gaza, number one.

Just as you described it. We'll analyze it a little bit more next time because I have to run off to another matter. But Max, I'm sorry for what happened to you at the airport. It's a lesson for everybody. It's also a manifestation of your personal courage. No surprise. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you again next week. Thanks a lot, Judge. Good seeing you. Sure. Coming up later today at one o'clock this afternoon, the British diplomat Ian Proud, who has some very strong advice for Sir Keir Starmer meeting with President Trump at two o'clock. Colonel Larry Wilkerson at three o'clock. Professor John Mearsheimer at four o'clock.

Chief Master Sergeant Dennis Fritz. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.