Judging Freedom - Q&A with You! Answering Your Questions "The Docket with Judge Nap"

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Q&A with You! Answering Your Questions "The Docket with Judge Nap"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 Friday, September 22nd, 2023. Here's a new segment we're trying out where you can email me questions just in the, in the place where you send comments to me. I see there's quite a few there already, and I'll pick out a few and, and answer them. And if this works, if it's popular, if a lot of you like it, we'll, we'll continue to do it and make it as a regular. So if I do this right and I click on the question, there it is. You'll see it on the screen. Earlier, this from a person called Hello Americans 2.

Earlier this week, you predicted Biden will not seek reelection. You mentioned Nixon and for the good of the country. What makes you believe that Biden has it in him to finally do what's right. Well, I don't know that Joe Biden has what's in him to finally do what's right. But I think and hope and suspect that when leaders of the Democratic Party go to him and say, if you run for re-election, the Republicans will not only beat you in the White House, they'll control the Congress for the next four years. It might scare him into deciding not to run. It will probably take his former boss and mentor, former President Barack Obama, to do this. Politicians are very selfish people. They rarely

do the right thing for that purpose. What they do is always either get reelected or when that's not possible to enhance their legacy. Okay, good question. Alright, Scott Solomon, why do you repeatedly use the term taxpayer money? Taxpayer money has nothing to do with the fiscal deficit. A lot of it is debt funded. And those to whom all wealth accumulates love the bonds. Okay, we have a fundamental disagreement as to how the economy works, Scott, when the government borrows money

from China or from Chase Manhattan Bank, and then creates the cash out of thin air with which to pay those loans back. That causes inflation. None of that is taxpayer money. It is money borrowed in the name of the taxpayer. So sometimes it's called taxpayer money. It is money printed or created in the name of the taxpayer. But injecting that brand new cash into the money supply increases the amount of dollars chasing the same amount, roughly, of goods and services. That's what causes inflation. And of course, both parties do that, Scott. As you know, Nikki Haley, whom I know, I don't have a favorite in the Republican primary, but Nikki Haley is the only one who has come down on the Republicans who are just as complicit in this. If Kevin McCarthy gets his way, you'll see a continuing resolution adopted next week which will fund the government for

another 30 days and eventually the budget will be adopted and there'll be trillions borrowed from the Chinese, from Chase Manhattan Bank, I'm just picking on Chase because it's the largest bank in the country, from individuals and from hedge funds, people looking for a safe place to put their money. But all of that will make the price of everything you own and everything you earn go up. It won't make your salary go up, but it'll make it more difficult for you to pay your bills. Okay. Sean Stark. If Trump still has not returned all those missing government secret documents, how is it that he walks around free? And doesn't that constitute special treatment? Body blue raised arms at cat orange whistling. All right. I don't know what that means at the end.

The government believes, actually an interesting question, Sean. The government believes that it now has all of the documents that he took. Some voluntarily returned, others seized from him by the FBI. How does he walk around free? Well, the Constitution says unusual bail shall not be required. It would be absurd to require bail from him. Where could he go? Where could he hide? The courts will trust him, as they do all kinds of people these days, who show up in court when he is supposed to without posting bail. Now, if he still has some of those documents after they've been subpoenaed and after they've been the subject of a search warrant and he knows he has them,

in the government's view, that's another crime. And if the government finds out and it's continuing to investigate him, he'll be indicted for that. Okay, somebody says, I think I'm going to skip this one. I feel there will be a bunch of dumb questions that will just frustrate me to watch. Okay, so far the questions have not been dumb and they've been very interesting. Okay, Ben, would you ever consider having a conversation on air with George Galloway? I feel you two would have an absolutely compelling conversation. The short answer is yes, I would. In fact, Mr. Galloway, a former member of parliament from Scotland,

who challenged the government of Tony Blair very aggressively, In fact, they threw him off the floor of the House of Commons a few times. He was so aggressive in Tony Blair's face and David, whose name escaping me, who replaced Tony Blair, the Tory leader. I would be happy to speak with George Galloway. George, I know we were scheduled and my schedule got away from me. We'll schedule it again. I hope I'm welcome on your show,

and you would be welcome here. Thank you very much for that question. Okay, question. Would you describe yourself as a libertarian that the author describes himself as nyet? Well, the answer to that is yes. I believe that the individual is greater than the state. The individual has an immortal soul and natural rights. The state is merely the dominant, violent power in a given geographic area, and it exists by taking life, liberty, and property. Without taking life, liberty, and property, the government could not exist. They have pretty much defined libertarians. Some people define libertarians by Murray Rothbard's famous non-aggression principle, which is that the initiation of all aggression, violent or deceptive, is immoral.

That's pretty much a mantra that most libertarians hold on to. And of course, like everything, just like there are many different versions of Democrats and Republicans and progressives, there are many different versions of libertarian. I am probably, wherever I go, the most libertarian person in the room. Okay. Northern Nevadan. Now, I don't know who you are, Northern Nevadan, but I know you write a lot. Keep writing. When is vote coming up in Congress to approve Ukraine additional funding? Doubtful all GOP will vote against it. This is a very interesting question because

if Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, has his way, and if Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader of the Senate, has his way, there be one budget, which will include the Defense Department budget, and it will include, hang on to your chair, $100 billion additional dollars on top of the $113 billion already budgeted, $100 billion additional dollars for Ukraine. Now, I don't know when this is going to happen. There are many Republicans who say they will not vote to keep the government open if the only way to do so is to add more money to the Ukraine coffers. This is really a disgrace. $100 billion, it'll be $200 billion if Joe Biden gets his way. That is almost a quarter of the defense budget. That is bigger than the entire defense budget of Russia and bigger than the entire

$200 billion, bigger than the entire defense budget of China, bigger than the defense budget of Great Britain. It's just reprehensible how money borrowed in the taxpayers' names just keeps getting spent over and over and over again. I had not heard the $100 billion figure until we played a clip earlier today from Senator Josh Hawley, of whom I'm not a fan, but I have no reason to believe he's not being honest, who had just emerged from a Republican senatorial caucus. It may have been the one, it may have been yesterday, we saw it today, and it may have been the caucus at which President Zelensky spoke. But whenever it was, he said, the number now is $100 billion. I don't think that will pass.

Will any money pass? Probably it will, because if it's one thing that the overwhelming majority of members of Congress agree on, it's war. We have one party in Congress, a big government party with a Democrat wing and a Republican wing. But it's basically big government, war, security, state, welfare, state, emergency state, all those big government things that the majority of Republicans and majority of Democrats happily allow the government to do. I'm going to scroll down here and see what questions have come in

since the last time. Stay, fight, win. Okay, that's nice. I agree with that. All right, some of this is really silly. Hello from an Irish libertarian, Justin SLA Roman IV. Nice to hear it. Here's an interesting statement. Biden hates America. Nixon loved America. first question about what makes me think that Joe Biden would do the right thing. I don't know that Biden hates America. I know he wants to drag it into a left-wing wokeism that many of us would not recognize. I think some of you have heard me tell this story. When I was a young professor of law at Delaware Law School in Wilmington, Delaware, this is in 1978 and 79.

I'd only been out of law school myself by five years. It was my first of four teaching assignments. I was a full-time member of the faculty of Delaware Law School, and Joe Biden was an adjunct. You know, he taught one course a week. The faculty really thought he had no business being on a law school faculty, and most of them didn't get along with him. I got along with him. He was very friendly. Students like him. He's got a very affable personality. A few years later, when I was at Fox and taking a train from New York down to Washington, the train is called the Acela. It's lousy compared to European trains, but it's like the best train we have here and the fastest.

Occasionally, he'd get on in Wilmington, which is about 70 to 80 percent of my trip already behind me, and he would come and sit with me. And sometimes when he was on ahead of me, like when we were going the other way, the Secret Service would come up to me and say, the vice president would like you to sit with him. We saw the passenger list and he saw you're on there. So we maintained the friendship. But that Joe Biden was a different Joe Biden than the one that's in the White House today. That Joe Biden, if you're my age, you'll know what this means, was a JFK, Scoop Jackson Democrat. So JFK and Henry Scoop Jackson, a moderate to conservative Democrat who represented the state of Washington in the Senate and was good friends with JFK. These were middle-of-the-road

Democrats who didn't fall for any of the left-wing nonsense which now pervades the Democratic Party in which Joe Biden is trying to get to pervade the United States of America. Did Nixon love America? Yes, I believe that Nixon loved America. I'm involved in an all-Broadway show called Trial on the Potomac. Probably going to come out. The show has been performed. It'll be performed again in 2024, the 60th anniversary of Nixon's, or maybe it's the 50th anniversary of Nixon's resignation. The theory of the show is that Nixon did not resign and was impeached, and the trial on the

Potomac is the impeachment. The show was written by people who believe that Nixon did not know about Watergate and was framed by his political enemies. The principal author of the play is a guy named Jeff Shepard. Jeff Shepard, who's my age, was at the time a 28-year-old lawyer in the White House, whose job it was, you ready for this, to transcribe the Nixon tapes. And Jeff Shepard, now a retired, very well respected lawyer at the time he was 28 years old, is convinced that John Dean and others set a trap for Nixon and he fell for it. And that if he had been impeached, he would have been acquitted. Well, when Senator Barry Goldwater and Senator Howard Baker, Goldwater, the senior Republican in the Senate, Baker, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, went to the White House in August of 74, they said, Mr. President, it's a tidal wave against you. If you don't resign, the country

will be more divided than it is now, and all we'll be fixated on will be your impeachment, and we think you will be impeached. We think that two-thirds of the Senate will vote to impeach you. Well, in trial on the Potomac, in which I might be playing Chief Justice Warren Berger, who would have presided over the trial in the Senate, remember from the Trump impeachments and even from the Clinton impeachment, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. In Trial on the Potomac, I won't tell you how it ends, except there's a very dramatic testimony by the character Richard Nixon, and that might be played by Rich Little, who's the greatest Nixon mimic. Joe Piscopo's not too bad, but Rich Little makes his face look like Nixon, who's the greatest Nixon mimic of our day. All right, Pete, Pete, thank you for that. I went

on a little bit longer than I thought I would. Let's see what else is there. Another one from Pete Pete. Okay, Global 360. Hi, Judge. What is your personal opinion on the events of 9-11? Did, do you believe the original narrative? And if not, what is your stance? Thanks, Ziggy at Global 360. Ziggy, I do not believe the official narrative. I don't know how it happened, but I do believe that elements in the government knew about it and looked the other way and may very well have caused it to happen. I'm not going to go through all the evidence because I don't have it at my fingertips. I do know that the Patriot Act, the most abominable piece of legislation ever enacted by Congress since it enacted the Alien and Sedition Act since 1798, which made it a crime to criticize the government. The Patriot Act, which allows one FBI agent to authorize another FBI

agent to search property, even though the Constitution is pretty clear, only judges can do this and they can only do it based on probable cause of crime sworn to under oath before them. The Patriot Act was written before 9-11. How did Building 7 come down seven or eight hours after the other two buildings came down? Why were Israeli Mossad agents across the river in Jersey City cheering the attacks on the World Trade Towers? Why were they arrested and never charged? Why were they released a month later? Why was the testimony of Dick Cheney and George Bush given in secret, not under oath, and not transcribed? I mean, there's so many of those questions. I once asked these questions when I was at Fox, and you know, management didn't like it. Some of my

colleagues who had lost friends in 9-11 didn't like it. Everybody was mouthing the official mantra. To make this even more conflicted, the chair of the 9-11 commission is the governor who put me on the bench. Governor Tom Kaine made my career. In New Jersey, judges are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate for seven years. If reappointed and reconfirmed before the end of seven, you have it for life. So my first appointment was Governor Tom Kaine.

My lifetime appointment was Governor Christine Todd Whitman. I love Tom Kaine, but I do not believe that the job of the 9-11 Commission even approached revealing the truth. Okay, that's enough on that. Mirage Coley, what is the end game for the Ukraine war? Is it pushing this too far? Russia at some point will say enough is enough and act. What's wrong with Biden? Biden, a great question, Neeraj. Biden is the captive of the left wing

of his party. I should have mentioned that earlier when I was talking about his personality and wokeism. Without the hard left, the Democrats are a minority. Now, I don't know where the hard left would go, but he is a captive of the hard left of his party. He is also a captive of the neocons, and the neocons never met a war they didn't like. And the neocons want to use, and they're in both parties, and they're well populated throughout the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department, even in the FBI for that matter. The neocons who hate Russia and hate Putin think that the American government can use Ukraine as a battering ram and it will drive Putin out of office. Not going to happen. Biden would drool over Putin's approval ratings, which are north of 82%.

Putin is immensely powerful and immensely popular. He's actually restrained. He could wipe out and demolish Ukraine in a week if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to do it. And he doesn't want to occupy Ukraine because he doesn't want to govern Ukraine. He just wants NATO and NATO's guns the hell out of there, just as we would if the Chinese entered into a treaty with Mexico that allowed Chinese offensive weaponry just south of the Rio Grande aimed at Texas and Miami and Los Angeles and Chicago and New York and Washington. We would feel about those offensive weapons, just as President Putin feels about what NATO wants to put into Ukraine.

All right, I've enjoyed this. I think I only answered about 10 questions. I don't know how many are out there, Gary, but probably a couple of hundred. We'll see what the number of people are who've watched this. If a number, a good number of you watch it, we'll do it again. Next week, another good week with all of our great guests. Thank you very much for watching and subscribing. Thank you for helping us break that 200,000 threshold. We're up to 201,000 guests. I can take Neeraj out of there. Okay, we're up to 201,000 subscribers. Our goal is a quarter of a million by Christmas.

You know what we do. We look out for your liberty.