Judging Freedom - Pentagon Doc Leaker _ Trump Getting Deposed Today_ Abortion Pill

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 13, 2023. It's about 10 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today. And they involve the leak of the Pentagon briefing documents, the latest on Donald Trump and his legal woes, and the latest on the abortion pill. And the leak issue is hot. When I say hot, I mean white hot. The Washington Post is reporting that the leaker is an employee, a civilian employee of the federal government who had a young group of gamers, young 16, 17, 18 year old kids with whom he was circulating these documents for months. How the Washington Post got their hands on this is beyond me. As we speak, unless this person has been arrested in the past 15 or 20 minutes, the federal government of the United

States of America is engaged in the largest manhunt in modern history to find this leaker. The documents that were leaked turn out to be far more damaging to the Biden administration, not to you, not to truth, but to the Biden administration than was originally thought. The bottom line of the leak of these documents reveals that the government itself does not believe that Ukraine can win this war, that the government itself knows that Russia has totally outmanned and outgunned the Ukrainian army, that the government itself knows that by early June, the Ukraine air defenses will be degraded to zero. Now, we will discuss all of this later today with Colonel Douglas McGregor, our regular military expert, very popular with most of you, or all of you, at three o'clock Eastern. But for now,

I just want you to know the seriousness with which the government takes this and the wacky Washington Post story that's out there. So the Washington Post apparently found one of the members of this gaggle of young gamers, and they interviewed him. And because he is under 18 years of age, they got his parents' permission for the interview. And because he is under 18 years of age, they did the interview on videotape from behind a screen. So in a moment, we will show you the most incendiary parts of the interview in which he describes his friend, the leaker. But of course, you won't see his face. You'll see the silhouette from head on and the silhouette from the side view, as is typical in these cases. I'm a little skeptical about all of this,

because if this young man knows who the leaker is, then the FBI knows who the leaker is, unless these gamers who all use crazy, wacky nicknames. Remember Guccifer? I mean, that wasn't his real name. It was a play on the word goose and on the word Lucifer. However, if they don't use real names and if they don't communicate from their own computers, then maybe they don't even know who this fellow is. of the gamers whose good friend was the leaker of these documents that as we speak is driving the Biden administration up the wall. This is about two minutes long. It's captivating. Take a listen. 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. Wow. You heard him referred to as OG. Again, initials for one of these crazy nicknames, a little scary because this young man, whoever he is, Washington Post is not going to reveal it. They have what's known as the reporter's privilege. So even if the FBI were to arrest the videographer who took that video and the reporter who asked the questions, and again, you don't see or hear the reporter, they are privileged not to reveal that. However, the young man in the video keeps

referring to the leaker in the past tense. He was a brilliant guy. He was this. He was that. Was he alive? Is he still alive? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if this is serious or for real. It obviously passes the smell test for the Washington Post reporting side. Whenever you think of their editorials, it's another thing. But their reporters are first rate. The Washington Post reporters obviously believe it's real. And they posted a very long piece. If you Google it, you'll see it.

It's probably 10,000 words. It'll take you a while to read the whole thing. And then you'll see this and other clips of interviews with this one young man who was apparently the source for the Washington Post. So the Biden administration is really taken aback by all of this, just like the Obama administration was when Edward Snowden revealed what he did. And it seems like these revelations were made for the same reason, for ideological reasons. The revelations were made by a person who wanted the American public to know the truth. Harry Johnson, harshly critical of CIA, both former CIA officers, have authenticated these documents. So the documents are true. The documents are real. They are not falsified.

And as I said earlier, they show that the federal government, your federal government, is spending your tax dollars in a war it knows it's going to lose, that we have troops on the ground that the government has denied, that American boys are shooting American military equipment, firing American ammunition at Russian boys, that American spies are gathering Russian information and giving it to Ukraine. If that doesn't involve America in this war against Russia, then I don't know what is. Maybe if Americans come home in body bags, the public will open its eyes. I don't want this to happen. I don't want an American to die. I don't want another person to die. But that's probably fanciful. It's probably just a matter of time before people closer to home keep dying because the Biden administration is determined to fight this war.

They somehow think that this war will liberate Crimea. Let me tell you, there is more of a chance of Arizona or New Mexico or Texas being returned to Mexico than there is Crimea being given to Ukraine. Believe the nonsense that comes from President Zelensky, that there will only be normalcy when the Ukrainian flag is flying over Crimea. Then there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, and maybe they want to pay a lot of money for it. I'm being a little snarky here because I'm really fed up with the lies and the cover-ups. And whoever this leaker is, is a courageous American hero. The government won't see it that way. The government will say this person committed espionage. This person either stole national secrets and exposed them, the government's view, or was given national secrets because of his job

in the Defense Department or in the intelligence community, and he didn't preserve them for safekeeping. That's the government's view, and the government will prosecute him aggressively, just like it is Julian Assange, just like it did Bradley, now Chelsea Manning, just like it wants to do with Edward Snowden. All of this is explained in my piece today, which is at judgenap.com, washingtontimes.com, townhall.com, creators.com, entitled, in most places, you know, the publisher gets to change the title, but working title, most places kept the title, The Pentagon Papers Again. Okay, as we speak, as I speak to you, it's a little after 10 o'clock in the morning on the east coast of the United States. Donald Trump

is back in Manhattan. No fanfare this time. And he is sitting down across the table from his nemesis, Tish James. She's the attorney general of the state of New York, and she has a legal team with her, and he has a legal team with him. And she gets to interrogate him about the methods of operating the Trump organization. You see Tish James, the attorney general of the state of New York, is suing the Trump organization, claiming it's really a criminal enterprise and that it lied, cheated and stole the money that it has. And therefore it has to cough up its wealth. And therefore the Trump family has to be removed from its management. Wow. That's the litigation in which Trump is being deposed. Those of you familiar with litigation know what a deposition is. It's an examination under oath in lawyers' offices or in a neutral place before trial.

There's no judge. There's no jury. It enables the examining party here in the state of New York to learn what the examined party here at Donald Trump will say at trial if it ever gets to trial. And of course, Trump's people get to examine the government's witnesses as well. What will Donald Trump say? The last time he was examined in one of these depositions, he invoked his Fifth Amendment protected right to remain silent. He doesn't need my advice, but I would give him the same advice. He's a criminal defendant in a case in New York City, and anything he says in

this civil case can be used against him in the criminal case. That's this week. Next week, he's back in New York for a rape trial in which he is defendant. Yes, you heard that right. A rape trial. It's not a criminal rape trial. It is a civil rape trial in which a woman alleges that Donald Trump raped her in the woman's dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, then a very high-end department store in New York City. And the courts are permitting that case to go forward. We don't know if Trump will testify. We don't know if he'll be forced to testify. In a criminal case, if you invoke your right to remain silent, the judge tells the jury, you may construe nothing from the defendant's decision not to testify because the defendant is innocent and so proven guilty and he has every right to remain silent. You can construe nothing about guilt or innocence.

That's in a criminal case. In a civil case where the defendant doesn't testify, the judge looks at the jury and says, you may draw an adverse inference. In English, you may assume that because this person won't testify, if he did, his testimony would harm him. So you may conclude that the reason he's remaining silent is he's afraid of the truth. Wow. That's what will happen in this civil case brought by Tish James, the Attorney General of New York, wanting to remove the Trump family from control of the Trump organization. That's what will happen in this civil rape trial next week before a federal judge in lower Manhattan if Trump decides not to testify or invoke his protection under the Fifth Amendment.

The plaintiff can call him. The lawyer for the lady who says he raped her can call Donald Trump to the witness stand. And then in front of the jury, he would either have to answer truthfully or invoke the Fifth Amendment. This is a devastating, devastating and dangerous legal situation in which he finds himself. If this isn't enough, the special counsel Jack Smith investigating matters around January 6th has begun investigating Trump fundraising. Apparently, Trump runs a PAC, a political action committee. Political action committees can raise unlimited funds. So if you're running for office and the candidate wants a donation from you, it's controlled by the federal government. I think it's now $2,800. It may be up to $3,000 per person,

per candidate, per campaign. But if you run a political action committee, there's no limitation and the identity of the donors and the amount they donated doesn't have to be revealed. When you're a candidate, obviously the identity of the donor and the amount of the donation has to be revealed and recorded with the federal government. So the allegation is that Trump used fraud to raise money by saying, give me money. I really won the election. We're going to reverse the election. And he collected millions making that promise. Now, is that a fraud? Well, the government has lawyers and confidence of Donald Trump,

to whom he said he knew that he really did lose the election, and that his public claims that he won the election were just to put up a front. But in his heart heart he knew that he lost. Well, if that's the case, then the government probably does have a complaint against him for fraud. And in this case, it would be criminal fraud, duping people out of money by giving them an untruth and causing them to rely on the untruth. What's fraud? A material misrepresentation made in order to induce reliance on which people relied and as a result of which they were harmed. The material misrepresentation, I lost the election, give me money, you give me enough money for a legal defense fund, we're going to win the election back. Made in order to collect money. People relied on it. People lost money as a result. That's what the government

has to show the grand jury, which will probably indict on this count. Late last week, two federal judges made different rulings on abortion. Wait a minute. I thought the Supreme Court said abortion was a state issue. Yes, it did. But this has to do with the Food and Drug Administration, one of those three-letter entities given to us by Woodrow Wilson, which regulates what drugs you can buy. There was a time when you could put into your own body whatever you wanted, but now, of course, the federal government, not the states, regulates what you can. Put aside the merits of the FDA. In 2000, the FDA approved an abortifacient, fancy phrase for

a drug that produces a spontaneous abortion when the fetus is seven weeks old or younger. No surgery needed. That drug was approved in the year 2000, and millions of pregnant women have used that drug to terminate their pregnancy, to kill the baby in the womb by expelling the baby from the womb. Last year, several pro-life doctors and other health care providers challenged the FDA's approval of this drug in a federal court in Texas. Well, the FDA approved it in 2000. The statute of limitations is six years. How can they challenge it now? Well, the FDA made some modifications to its approval, and those modifications were fewer

than six years ago. So the judge accepted the case. And the judge ruled that when the FDA approved this in 2000, it did not follow its own rules, and it didn't engage in the rigorous scientific analysis that Congress requires of it. And therefore, its approval in 2000 is going to be invalidated in 2023. So this federal judge in Texas ordered the FDA to rescind its approval of this drug. Now, without the approval of the drug, no doctor can prescribe it and no pharmacy can distribute it. At the same time that this federal judge in Texas made this ruling, literally the same day, or I think it was the next day, another federal judge in the state of Washington ruled the opposite, which is that the courts can't second guess the scientific methodology used by the FDA. And besides, it's too little, too late.

If you wanted to challenge this under the law, you would have to have challenged it within the six-year statute of limitations. So you have two federal judges ruling the opposite. Federal judge in Texas, the drug was never adequately approved, can't use it. Federal judge in Washington, there's nothing wrong with the approval. FDA, keep your approval out there. Doctors, you can prescribe it. Patients, you can take it. What do you do when you have federal judges ruling the opposite? Well, the Biden administration, the Department of Justice appealed the ruling of the federal judge in Texas. And within 72 hours, late last night, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is headquartered in New Orleans and covers Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi,

reversed the federal judge in Texas. And so the drug is now out on the market. There are some things that the Food and Drug Administration did, which allowed the drug to be delivered by mail. The federal judge in Texas, of course, invalidated that, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit did not disturb that. So you can't get this drug by mail, as you have been able to do since 2016 when the FDA modified its rules. But the drug is now lawful again everywhere in the United States. Doctors can prescribe it, manufacturers can produce it, and pharmacies can deliver. This is all the preliminary ruling by the Fifth Circuit. This is not a final determination on whether or not this drug is lawful. But as I speak, the conflict between the two federal judicial rulings is no longer a conflict because the Fifth Circuit has substantially, not fully, substantially reversed the trial judge in Texas. So there's

no adversity between the two judicial rulings. That's a lot for hot topics this morning, more as we get them. Larry Johnson at one o'clock Eastern today on, is this young man that we just showed you credible? Is the Washington Post producing the truth? Was it a gaggle of gamers that were examining these documents for months before the federal government even came on to it? And then at three o'clock this afternoon, the inimitable, the incomparable Colonel Douglas McGregor. Are the documents true? Are we fighting

a war that we know and the Ukrainians know that the Russians will win? More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.