Judging Freedom - Putin - Is He Stronger or Weaker After the Revolt_ w_Tony Shaffer fmr CIA

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

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Thanks for watching! Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 26th, 2023. It's 11 o'clock in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States. A very busy and much in demand Colonel Tony Schaefer joins us now. Tony, always a pleasure and thank you for coming here. Judge, always a pleasure to join you. So what happened over the weekend in Russia as you see it? we saw was a natural outcome of Tony Soprano style politics at a nation state level. I've said on your show multiple times that Putin's a thug. He's surrounded by thugs. Oligarchs are thugs. So

if you can imagine, and I've been using some analogy, if you will uh the hunt for red october meets uh the sopranos uh there's elements of nationalism there's elements of of thuggery and i think uh progosian the the ostensible leader of wagner was given a lot of rope by putin because putin i think has a soft spot for him they came up together from uh from petersburg from the time there that they went worked together as kind of bag men and uh i think that what we saw was a natural outcome of where progosian thought he had more support more ability to collapse the r Russian government than he did. The three things he didn't have, which was necessary, that is Prokofiev, to be successful, was other leaders within Russia. His thuggery had to go along with him.

More than a couple of oligarchs had to go along, and nobody did. And then secondly, he had to have the military with him. him military was completely alienated by his antics regarding wagner uh by the way there's a theory that uh progozhin was yelling for all the resources regarding uh ukraine not so much because he wasn't getting them it's because he wanted to have a bigger stock to do what he just tried to do uh over the weekend and then then third, the Russian people. I don't think the Russian people were convinced that Putin needed to be replaced. So I think those are the things that actually played out and are still playing out. I don't think the thing with Prokofiev is done yet.

I don't think him going to Belarus is the end of the story. Unless he doesn't come home or comes home in a coffin. Well, I think he's being kept alive because of that very issue. Dead men tell no tales. So I'm just telling you, Judge, these people are thugs. So, you know, you've seen the movies, you know, Goodfellas and all of a sudden the other is like, I'm telling you behind the scenes, all that's going on. And I think that if I were Putin, I'd be keeping Prokofiev alive long enough to verify what his motivations were and if there was any Western interference or engagement by him on this issue. What Western interference do you think there might have been?

Do you think American intelligence was involved? And as you know, leaders of American intel met with the gang of eight yeah that's the members of congress republican and democrat leaders on the two house uh on the house and senate intelligence committees and the speaker of the house and the democratic leader in the senate the eight of them it's sort of a congress within a congress the law requires major intel and military developments to the extent the government knows about them ahead of time to share them with these people. They can't tell the rest of Congress and they can't tell the public, but somehow that's what the law requires. I think there's a movie about them called The Star Chamber. Right. What were

they told on Wednesday? So look, I'm waiting for verification of my sources, but so far there's a rumor or I think some level of disclosure by the Biden administration that they have foreknowledge of Prigozhin's plan. If that's true, if they have foreknowledge, the question becomes, okay, were you part of that? Did you encourage him? Were you actually doing something that is akin to a covert action? And by the fact that you saw the gang of eight or whatever you want to call it, and I know you're talking about, because my operations had to be briefed to them too back in the old days, because my operations were off the books. And so the answer is if they were briefed, it's probably more than simple intelligence involvement or intelligence reporting.

You are of the view that in the Western press or the Western world, Putin looks weaker this morning than he did Friday morning. I am, but I'm not. I mean, so yes and no. This is where there's a number of historic references I've been citing in the media. First, de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle in 61 had a military coup that actually he came out of stronger. Erdogan, the president of Turkey, had one a couple of years ago and he came out of it just fine. And then there's on the other side of this, there's Gorbachev. Gorbachev, as you know, 91 had the military coup and he recovered. Boris Yeltsin and others helped him, but then he lost power and Yeltsin took his place. So there's no clear indicator this close to the

event of how things are going to go. With that said, my friend Blaine Holt and I were on Newsmax on Saturday and Sunday both. And we said on Saturday, this is not going to last long. We don't see any power behind Prokosian to make it work. And sure enough, I mean, I think even he and I were shocked that the next morning we're talking about it like it's already done. So it was very clear that he came back rapidly. And that indicates to me that the bureaucracy and the military and the people are still on Putin's side. So I think, Judge, there's too many people with aspirations of having Putin gone, reporting as if it's going to happen rather than trying to analyze like we're doing right now the situation for what it is. So if you define government as

the entity that has a monopoly on force or a monopoly on violence in a geographic area, Putin continues to have that monopoly, and even 25,000 of Prokofiev's troops couldn't cause him a pinprick. I mean, they said they were marching. Were they literally walking from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow or were they in vehicles on a highway? Now they were in vehicles, but again, they started off with a thousand kilometers. That's no small distance and their roads aren't as nice as ours, just saying. And I think some things happened. First off, I think there's indicators the Chinese may have played a role in this. Remember, Judge, the Chinese have a lot of influence over everything at this point. It is what it is.

I'm not here to make a commentary to it. I'm just saying it is what it is. Wagner is a major client of the Chinese. The Chinese use Wagner not just for security. Wagner has become another tool shared by Russia of foreign policy. Wagner was created by a combination of the GRU and Putin. They are designed to do off-the-book stuff. The Chinese don't have any analog of that yet. I'm not saying they won't have, but they don't have it as directly. Not a paramilitary force that can go in and do special operations type things.

They don't have that yet. So I think as much as anything, the effects of Wagner is important to China's foreign policy. So the idea that Wagner is going to get off the rails and go take over a country, I don't think the Chinese wanted that. And I think some folks probably got involved in the China side on this too. Prokosian's angry videos, was he speaking to fearful and impatient troops, or was he speaking to the Russian public, or was he speaking to right-wing elitist oligarchs that want a heavy hand in Ukraine and the war over tomorrow? All of the above. Look, he actually said some truth in some of the missives he did. I mean, one of the latest ones he talked about being a lie. It's about nationalism and supporting the

people. I've always said it's about resources. More than anything, Putin understands that if those gas and oil reserves under the Ukrainians are used to make money for Ukraine, that's going to be a net competitor. Putin's a thug. He's not going to want that. So of course, he's going to drape it in nationalism. There's no news there. But I think Prokofiev's constant complaining really did essentially just basically get him to the point of where nobody wanted to deal with him. And I don't believe for a minute that I think he wasn't, he was encouraged maybe by his own ambitions. I think he wanted to be eventually the defense minister. Remember, Judge, this guy is essentially a street vendor who understood how to do food and do deals on the street in Petersburg that came up with Putin. He has no military experience. He's a gangster. So I think

maybe in his own ham-handed way, he thought he could use different mechanisms to become more powerful within Russia. I just, I think he overplayed his hand. Is he long for the world, Progozhin? I wouldn't be taking any high tea anytime soon, like it happened back at one of the other guys got a good dose of plutonium-210. As a matter of fact, plutonium-210 has been used several times to take out adversaries of Putin. And yeah, I think him going to Belarus is a waypoint. I think he's a dead man walking. I don't think you challenge the king and come away with a nice lifestyle after. I think he is limited, and I think they want to find out what he knows before they do anything to him. I want to play some tapes for you of videos in Rostov-on-Don after Prokofiev's people began their march to Moscow.

Actually, after they ended their march to Moscow. These are taken by Patrick Lancaster, who's an American video journalist who's been on the show. He's an independent videographer. He actually gets to talk to Progozhin in Russian, so I will read aloud the subtitle so those

absorbing, judging, freedom, audio only can make the most of it. It's three clips. We're going to run them back to back to back, and then we'll ask you what you think. Sure. Penny, God help you, dear. Thank you.

We pray for you all. Thank you. We are with you. How was the result for today? What? How was the result for today? What's next? No, the result.

Oh, the result is normal. Normal? We energize them all. Good luck. Take care. Take care. What do you think about the Wagner? They are nice guys, really. Yes, we were not afraid at all.

We are people of the same blood. What is the situation? Super. great, top level. No problems today? No problem. Can you tell us again? You know, there is no conflict. Everything is great.

We love our president. You are just kidding, perhaps, to pick us up. Our president is the best one. We love Wagner and our defense minister. Wagner is the strongest assault group in the world. Was I afraid? No. What is the situation? F-ing great, really good.

What are you going to do now? Work, work. Really? Keep working. Guys, you are great. This is also a victory. No matter who says what, we will win. So by noon, we were terrorists and in the afternoon, we are great guys. Come on, you know yourself. At noon, they were traitors and by by sundown they were great guys.

A brilliant move on the part of Putin, or they were eyeball to eyeball and Putin blinked? Putin referenced, and I don't think he referenced without concern, the 1917 revolution, his speech on, I can't, I don't know. I'm not familiar with their times either late saturday early sunday during the time this thing was still going on he referenced the 1917 revolution now he he didn't say which one uh in 1917 judge you i'm sure you recall and i'm not sure if the audience will is is that they had the removal of Tsar Nicholas in March, which was the initial revolution. Lenin and the people overthrowing the Tsar, and then the October Revolution. They threw Lenin out. Right. Yes, where you had then the October, the Civil War started.

Civil War lasted until 1924. So he invoked 1917 without clarifying what he really meant. And I think the warning, my interpretation was, you don't want chaos. You don't want chaos. And I think that's what people like, oh, yeah, we really don't want chaos. And for better or for worse, he's recovered the economy. By all accounts, the economy is bouncing back from the sanctions. He's creating new friends and allies. You know, the Indians are coming around. Erdogan's coming around. By the way, I think Erdogan's going to be the first guy back in his camp because of Erdogan surviving his coup. And then I think the Chinese, you know, they're going to look at this a little

bit, but I think they're going to move back into helping Putin. So I think he used that for purposes of reminding everybody how dangerous things can become if you have an influence trying to upend a legitimate government. Here's the CIA's man in the State Department, otherwise known as Secretary of State Tony Blinken, on CNN yesterday. We've seen this aggression against Ukraine become a strategic failure across the board. Russia is weaker economically, militarily. Its standing around the world has plummeted. It's managed to get Europeans off of Russian energy. It's managed to unite and strengthen NATO with new members and a stronger alliance. It's managed to alienate from Russia and unite together Ukraine in ways that it's never been before. This is just an added chapter to a very, very bad book that Putin has written for Russia.

There's the neocon Bible. Is any of it true, Tony? I want to know what he's smoking. I mean, that's some good ganja there, man. I don't know who his dealer is, but man, you need to get his name. If you're a marijuana expert, you need to find out who's giving him that. Look, I'm telling you,

Putin, the economy's bounced back. They're coming out of recession based on the sanctions. They have new friends and back. They're coming out of recession based on the sanctions. They have new friends and allies. They're expanding their presence in a number of places with the Chinese. The Chinese are going to be picking up the slack. Anything the Europeans don't want, judge, China's going to take regarding energy. It's like, really?

And I'm sorry, NATO is not stronger than ever. Yeah, you got Sweden and you got Finland coming on, but you got the southern flank with Erdogan, who's NATO, he's now, I'd say, closer to Putin than he is to Biden regarding his politics and loyalties. So I don't see any reality there. And by the way, Ukraine is not a failure. I mean, right now they're holding what they took and nobody is being able to budge them. So it's getting like militarily, I don't know what he's talking about. Should we expect an acceleration of Russian military action moving westward in order to undercut the prognosian criticisms of the defense minister? So the answer is I don't know. At this point, I think Putin's going to take a deep breath and take a step back and try to figure out what needs to be done. I don't see them changing strategy all that much at this point, they, the Russians Russians because what they've been doing has been effective despite what Tony Blinken says sitting back and creating uh these layers of

defense and by the way they've adapted I was watching some one of the experts talk about this the Russians figured out how NATO would do breaching operations and then reset their their lines of defense based on defeating that strategy to include not even doing lines they do like zigzags so one the moment you come up to basically defeat one line of defense you're already kind of in another so it's it's it's and then plus they've understood that Ukraine has a lot of drones so they figured out how to defeat how to make it hard for the drone so I'm just saying that I think the Russians have a good again I'm not pro-Russian let me be the drone. So I'm just saying that I think the Russians have a good, again, I'm not pro-Russian.

Let me be very clear on this. I'm not pro-Russian, but I think the Russians have developed a very effective strategy for defeating the offensive elements of Ukraine at this point in time. And I don't think they're going to change that. So if the CIA spies on Russian intel and Russian intel spies on the CIA spies on Russian intel and Russian intel spies on the CIA and the CIA tipped off the gang of eight as to what Rogozhin was up to, didn't President Putin's intel people, presumably they talked to President Putin, know what was coming?

Well, spy versus spy stuff is always complicated. Look, I was just talking to someone. You were in this business, Tony. You know exactly what this is like. Yeah. And as my old friend, Jerry Doyle used to say, it's a wilderness of mirrors and he's right. So you don't know what is reflection and what is real sometimes, Judge. And I'm speaking from experience. Some of the things we've talked about regarding able danger, the same thing. It's like there's layers within layers, there's intrigues within intrigues. And the answer is, I just don't, you know, we're too close to the event for me to give you an honest answer of how much anybody knew. I think we'll know more over the next few days. But yeah, I think the FSB, KGB, whatever you want to call it, probably had

some level of insight that something was coming. And I think Putin may have quietly prepared for it because, I mean, obviously, when it happened, people scrambled. They moved out of the way. But again, it's a flash to bang time. The time from the event to the resolution was less than 24 hours, pretty much. And that's extraordinary for an attempt at basically an insurrection. Prokosian's people killed over 20 Russian soldiers, bona fide Russian soldiers. They shot down 12 helicopters with impunity. When was the last time something like that happened? I think it was Prokosian trying to prompt, provoke a larger response. I have no doubt

that he was trying to make it look like he's the victim. And I think that he overplayed his hand. I think he's going to, I think there's going to be consequences for that. I don't think Putin's going to let that go. I think Putin's let it go right now to get him off the battlefield and into a position where he can have access to him. I think that's, Judge, I think that's the only reason Prokosian's still alive is I think that's the only reason Bogosian is still alive, is because he wants to know what Bogosian knows. I mean, that's what I would do. Tony Schaefer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I know you're busy and much in demand, and thanks for sharing your time with us. I always enjoy our conversations. Thank you, Judge.

Oh, pleasure. We'll see you again soon. Yes, sir. Colonel Douglas McGregor, 245 Eastern today. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.