Judging Freedom - Russia Attacks U.S. Drone _ Abortion Pill Availability Case _ Stormy Daniels & Trump

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 16, 2023. It's about 1145 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today. You probably have seen on this program and elsewhere the tape of the U.S. drone over the Black Sea being sprayed with excess jet fuel by the Russian jet fighter. We're going to show it to you again now, Gary, if you want to put it up. So that's the Russian jet fighter coming very, very close to the drone. You see the fuel oil being sprayed. There are the propellers on the drone. Watch what happens when you see a second jet fighter making the same run at the same drone. You'll see it coming out of the skies any second now. There it is. This one not only

sprays fuel, but it also clips one of the blades of the propeller that stops the screen. You'll see the screen reassemble in a moment. And if you look very carefully at those blades, you see one of them, there it is, was injured as soon as the operators of the drones in the United States saw that they brought the drone down. It's now 4000 feet at the bottom of the Black Sea. So what was the American drone doing there? that can hear conversations in a taxi cab on 6th Avenue in New York City from 12 miles outside the limits of the international waters outside New Jersey and 50,000 feet up in the sky. We have the same thing. The Chinese have the same thing. The weather balloon was a weather balloon made to look like a weather balloon.

Remember, we were all looking at the weather balloon a few weekends ago. That was a Chinese spy balloon, and it was shot down only because it drifted into United States airspace. Was the American drone in Russian airspace is a matter for dispute. I don't know that anyone is going to be able to calculate exactly where it was. There was an agreement going back to the Reagan years that the Black Sea is restricted Russian area, the entire Black Sea. American generals have long bemoaned that agreement. Would the United States comply with the agreement? Apparently not. A lot of these agreements, as long as they don't involve violence, are not ordinarily complied with. What was the drone doing there? Looking at Crimea so that it could

relate to American intel, Defense Intelligence Agency, which would relate it to the CIA, which would relay it to the Ukrainian intel, which would relay it to Ukrainian military. Here's what's going on in Crimea. Here's the amassing of troops. Here's their artillery arsenals. That stuff is on its way to eastern Ukraine to be fired at fill in the blank. So it's an intelligence instrument that it's up there. I thought that Senator Graham's comments, we'll run them for you right now, were absurd. Take a listen. Well, we should hold them accountable and say that if you ever get near another U.S.

set flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets. He's crazy. He just likes to start war. Well, let me give him the benefit of the doubt. This is the senator who said to Joe Biden, please send a team of assassins to Moscow to assassinate President Putin. This is the Lindsey Graham version of foreign affairs, which is to lead with violence first and diplomacy I'm going to see a second. You don't shoot down a plane with human beings in it because they are molesting a piece of mechanical equipment that that you have in the sky. drones over Mexico. Let's say Putin enters into an agreement with the president of Mexico to fly drones over Mexico so that you can see the eyelashes on Governor Abbott's face in the statehouse in Texas. I think we can understand how upset the Russians were because we know how

upset we would be. But the idea of killing human beings and risking the start of World War III is crazy. But we ran Senator Graham because he probably shares the views of a lot of people, and the president needs to know that there are people that feel that way. Right now, the drone is 4,000 feet. That is deep. 4,000 feet below the Black Sea. On the base of it, there are American submarines and Russian submarines racing to get there first. Speaking of Texas, yesterday in Texas, a federal judge heard oral argument on whether or not the FDA properly approved an abortion medication. Now, this medication dislodges the baby, the fetus in the womb from the uterine wall, which of course prevents it from receiving nourishment. It's the first of two medications

ordinarily given to result in the spontaneous expulsion of the baby through the birth canal. The argument is that the FDA did not properly process used by the FDA to approve a drug 23 years after it approved it. But that's the argument in federal court today. Now, when the Supreme Court came down with the Dobbs decision, the author of that opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, and one of the signers on it, who also wrote a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, and one of the signers on it who also wrote a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both said this opinion removes from federal jurisdiction anything about abortion. That's pretty sweeping. That means that the feds can't legislate through the Congress on abortion and that federal judges can't hear any cases

involving abortion. Well, this is a challenge to the FDA procedures, and the only proper way to challenge a federal agency is before a federal court. You can't challenge a federal agency before a state court. So notwithstanding this language in the Dobbs opinion, and notwithstanding Justice Kavanaugh, who provided the critical fifth vote to overturn Roe versus Wade. This was properly heard, in my view, by a federal judge in Texas. Now, what this judge is going to do with it, I don't know. Women have been using this pill, and if you're right to life as I am, you condemn the whole abortion process. But I'm trying to be neutral on this and just look at it from a legal perspective. Women have been using this pill and doctors have been prescribing it for 23 years. It's almost absurd that the FDA should have to reconstruct what it did 23 years ago when it approved it or that the FDA should have to approve it again. My own views are we shouldn't have an FDA. The federal government should have nothing to do with medication, nothing to do with

medicines, nothing to do with health. This is an area reserved by the 10th Amendment to the states. This is big government run amok, that if you want to sell an aspirin in the United States, you need the approval of federal regulators but that's where we are. That's where we were yesterday. We'll see how this federal judge in Texas rules. Texas has a very odd system. You file a complaint in federal court in New Jersey. You file it with a clerk of the federal court in Trenton. The federal court in New Jersey, you file it with a clerk of the federal court in Trenton. The federal court sits in Trenton, the state capital in Camden, a city south of Trenton,

and in Newark, a city in the northern part of the state, right near New York City. And the clerk has what's called a wheel, literally a wheel with judges' names on it, and whoever's name is up at the top of the wheel gets assigned the case. That procedure is followed in every federal court in the union except in Texas. In Texas, you file the complaint before a particular judge. You can pick the judge. The plaintiffs picked a judge who is a pro-life guy and who probably has a preconceived attitude about the FDA, as I do, that it was wrong when it approved this product. He didn't seem to reveal that in the oral argument yesterday. We'll find out when his ruling comes down. This is a Trump appointee, a person very active in the right to life movement before he became a judge. Should he recuse himself from this case or can he rule properly?

Because both sides are entitled to fairness here. The government, as overbearing and wrong as it almost always is, is entitled to fairness. And the people challenging this are entitled to fairness. People challenging it chose this particular federal judge. He heard the oral argument yesterday for four hours. Supreme Court, you get one hour. So they went through this with great detail. Also yesterday, the prosecutors for the district attorney in Manhattan interviewed Stormy Daniels. Who's Stormy Daniels? Stormy Daniels is

the former porn star who alleges a sexual relationship with former President Donald Trump before he was president. She also alleges that he paid her through a circuitous route $130,000, not to mention this sexual liaison in the days and weeks preceding the 2016 presidential election. That's the one where then Mr. Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Question is, who paid for this and what was it? It appears as though it was corporate funds from the Trump organization, which would make the payment for campaign purposes illegal. It also appears that this was booked as legal expenses when it really was either hush money or the settlement of a dispute, however you want to call it. So the booking was improper. In

New York, for a corporation to hide its expenses is a misdemeanor, a crime punishable by less than a year in jail. However, if the expense itself was illegal, then the hiding of the true purpose of the expense is a felony. So it's not an easy case for the DA in Manhattan to prove. This is apparently going to be the first indictment of Donald Trump. It could come as early as next week. The DA in Manhattan would have to prove that this was really a campaign expense. It appears as though it was because it was intended to keep her from disrupting the campaign by going on national television and saying, I had a sexual relationship with this guy while I was a porn star.

That would make it a felony. And then the hiding of it in the books of the Trump organization would make it a felony as well. That's probably what Donald Trump will be indicted for. And finally, in your hot topics this morning, the BATF, using its ability to subpoena records from Bank of America and Visa, MasterCard and American Express and all the big credit card companies to see who has purchased guns. It is also subpoenaing the bank records using the Patriot Act to do so. I'll explain how that works in a minute, of gun dealers to see to whom they're selling guns. The Patriot Act, of course, allows one FBI agent to authorize another FBI agent to seize records held by a third party custodian. So in this case, they would be seizing records of the bank of the gun dealer. They would be seizing credit card companies from of the credit card company of the records of the gun

purchaser. Why does the BATF want this? In order to buy a gun, in most states, you have to be licensed or authorized or permitted by the state. And of course, the gun dealer keeps records of his gun sales. The feds desperately, desperately want a federal gun registry. A federal gun registry is prohibited by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that gun regulations are a state matter and not a federal matter. Why do they want a federal gun registry? For two reasons. They want to be able to intimidate gun owners. They want to be able to say, let's see, you're on social security. You get 1500 or 1750 or 2000 a month. And you just went out and bought a handgun for $2,000. We think you spent too much money on

that handgun. Where is that money coming from? Damn it. It's none of the government's business where that money is coming from. It's none of the government's business how you spend your money. It's none of the government's business what your income is, as long as you report it properly to the IRS authority. It's none of the BATF's business about tracking guns and buying guns and how much you're spending. They'll go to a 78-year-old man and knock on the door and say, we see that you bought two guns last week, and we know what your income is. Can you show us the guns to make sure you still have them? I think I'm making it up. I'm not. That happened in Wilmington, Delaware, where the senior citizen recorded the conversation. The BATF agent didn't know he was being recorded.

The senior citizen is aware of his rights under the Second Amendment, and he politely closed the door. If the BATF knocks at your front door asking to see your guns, ask them for their search warrant. They won't have one. Close the door and call the local police and say, there's a guy at my front door with a gun, and he's demanding to see my guns. And you'll see an armada of local police coming to arrest the BATF agent. What does the BATF really want? What does the federal government really want? It wants a federal gun registry. It wants to know who owns what guns. It is dying to have that registry. Right now, there are 51 separate registries for the 50 states and for the District of Columbia.

Some of those states, like New Jersey and California, would gladly give that information, if it weren't against the law, to do so to the feds. Other states like South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Montana, where the right to keep and bear arms is respected by state law, would never give that information to the feds. Why in God's name do the feds want a federal registry of guns? Because they want to know from whom they should seize guns under the right circumstances, like maybe another lockdown for a pandemic. People resisting the lockdown. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. You guys know me. I'm not making any of this up. It is harshly dangerous to the freedom of self-defense for

there to be a federal gun registry, because the first thing dictators do when they take over a government is seize the guns so that the government can't be resisted. And the whole purpose of the Second Amendment is not to shoot deer. It's to protect yourself when the police can't or won't show, and it's to shoot at tyrants if they take over the government. The latter is not just me, though I have said it many times. That's Justice Scalia, the late, great Antonin Scalia, in the Heller v. District of Columbia decision 2008, which upholds the individual personal right to keep and bear arms. McDonald v. Illinois, Justice Alito, three years later, again upholds the individual right to keep and bear arms and requires the states to recognize it. D.C. v. Heller required the feds to recognize it. D.C. versus Heller required the feds to recognize it. And finally in this trilogy is Bruin versus New York State Rifle Association Justice Clarence Thomas just nine months ago, June of 2022, which says not only do you have the individual personal right to own a gun, you have the individual personal right as a law-abiding adult to carry a gun.

And how do we characterize this right? As a first-class right in the same category as the First Amendment. The government has no more right to a registry of gun owners than it does to a registry of book owners, because your right to keep and bear arms and defend yourself is in the same category as your right to think as you wish and say what you think and speak what you say. Oh, if we only had a government that recognized those rights. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.