Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : American Killers.

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Scott Ritter : American Killers.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, December 11, 2005. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, as always, my dear friend. I do want to speak to you about American killers, also known as SEAL Team 6 and their bosses, Admiral Bradley, and Secretary Heggseth. But before we do, one or two questions about the latest in Iraq. in Ukraine and the latest with Russian negotiations. Do the Russians take seriously diplomacy conducted by real estate agents?

Russia takes seriously the United States of America because we are a significant power armed with nuclear weapons. Certain aspects of Russian the government structure takes seriously these real estate negotiators because they represent the president of the United States. But the vast majority of serious Russians are not happy with this. I just finished writing an article. It's on my substack words matter.

It's based upon the fascinating dialogue I've had with Andrei Ilnitsky, he's And you just finished spending about three weeks in Russia. Correct. And I met with Andre there. Retired Lieutenant General, former senior advisor to Minister of

Defense, Joy Gou, responsible for information policy. You know, he is the author of a doctrine or a thought process called mental war. He's the one who coined that term.

In mental war, sort of a corollary of Ghanady Gerasimov's hybrid war. You might remember, people might remember in 2013, Gerasimov wrote an article that was misconstrued in the West. They said it was Gerasimov's doctrine that this was Russian doctor. No, what Gerasimov was saying is that Russia is subjected to hybrid warfare from the United States that uses unconventional means, such as non-governmental organizations, media, et cetera. to undermine Russian society to create unrest that can facilitate regime change. And Lmitzky has talked about mental war that is a strategy of the United States to get the Russian people to lose confidence in Russia, to lose confidence in themselves. And it's a decades-long process that's geared to collapse Russian society from within.

And the reason why I bring this up is when you have, Negotiators like Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, look at the term they're using. Deal. We want to make a deal. This is a good deal. The Russians don't want to make a deal. The deal is subjective. A deal is temporary. A deal isn't honesty. A deal means that each side has their own opinion about what they want to achieve. They've just, you know, draw four corners around some vague terms that they can shake hand on. But the Russian goal is an objective in the deal could be very different. from the American goals and objectives.

And the Russians don't want that. What the Russians want is a binding treaty. And you're not going to get a binding treaty from Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, and that's the problem. Even Vladimir Putin has said in the long term to have a new security framework in Europe and a new security relationship with the United States, it's not going to be about shaking hands and doing business. It's going to be about sitting down and negotiating very detailed treaty.

that are legally binding and there are consequences for failure to comply. You know, the United States has withdrawn from two major landmark treaties, the ABM Treaty and the INF Treaty, one dealing with anti-ballistic missiles, the other dealing with intermediate range of missiles. And the Russians are saying, what good is a treaty with America? And if we can't, if America can't respect a treaty, how can we expect them to respect a deal? And again, the closest thing to a deal out there is the Joint Comprehensive Plan. of action which the united states had with iran it's not a treaty it didn't go to the senate it was

basically empowered through presidential executive order it was a deal and what did donald trump do when he became president he broke the deal right this is what the russians this is a problem that the the the the main part of the russian government has they like that wittkoff and kushner are coming and talking dialogue is good remember there was no dialogue under biden right they're not looking for a deal. They're not looking for a business relationship. They're looking for binding treaties, and the Trump administration just isn't in that mode. So Trump is kind of in a box, is he not? He's got a Secretary of State who doesn't want the war to end, who hasn't participated in the negotiations. He's relying on a real estate buddy and his son-in-law who have zero diplomatic

experience, who probably manifest ignorance of Russian history and culture, and who haven't even spoken to Sergei Lavrov. Right? Labrond is the minister of the foreign minister. He's not going to speak to Whitkoff directly. That's not his place. His job is to speak to Rubio. But Rubio's out of the game right now.

And I'll tell you why Rubio's out of the game. He's out of the game because Rubio fell under. the wing of the Scott Besson crowd, the Keith Kellogg crowd, Rubio was selling, you know, a bag of goods to Donald Trump, that Russia was being defeated, their economies on the verge of collapse, all we had to do is triple down on sanctions, it keeps supplying, the Russians are running out of manpower, and then Rubio had a phone call with Sergei Lavrov. Now, we don't know the exact details of this, but there's been enough hints dropped. Lavrov read Rubio the riot act, where Rubio tried to strongarm Russia and say, got to make a deal because it's only going to get worse. Labrov basically said,

what planet do you live on? Yeah. You know, we're dealing with reality here. And the reality here is, we don't need you. The fact is we don't want you. We're going to win this war regardless of what you do. We don't care about you. I'm going to hang this phone up and we're going to keep moving forward in winning this war. And he did so. And there were ramifications because I don't think the criminal was ready to call it quits on the Alaska process. And that's why you had Kirill Dimitria fly to America, go down to Miami, and meet with Steve Whitkoff to continue this dialogue. But Trump was read into that phone call, and Trump, I think, woke up and realized that he had been lied to. That's why he fired Keith Kellogg. And that's why he

started to say things like Ukraine has lost this war, that if Ukraine to make peace now or lose everything in the future and the inevitability of a Russian victory and the inability of America to stop the Russians from going forward. So there's not going to be a negotiated settlement. What I'm here to say right now is that Russia will win this war by achieving the unconditional surrender of Ukraine and the United States is okay with that at this juncture. And are the Europeans crazy enough to think that somehow they can salvage Ukraine?

Their latest scheme is, I think, correct me if I'm wrong or if you see this differently. I think the Europeans right now, to be honest, are buying time. They're buying time. They're waiting for the midterm elections. The American midterm,

the American midterm elections this coming November. They have been told by, and again, we have a lot of treasonous people here in the United States. I understand policy differences. I have many policy differences. But when you go and negotiate with foreigners to undermine the executive of the United States,

you're committing treason and you have Democrats and Republicans right now who are meeting with the Europeans and we have some people in Trump's cabinet who are meeting with the Europeans telling them all we have to do is delay hold on, survive

until November and then if Congress is flipped then Trump will be stymied and then all you have to do is wait the final two years and then we can reverse all this so that's what they're trying to do they're in no position to create a war because they don't have any ability.

What they're doing is creating political difficulties for this president, and they're trying to extend the viability of Zelensky. But it's not working because on the front line right now, the Ukrainian army is in near total collapse. And there's nothing that can be done to salvage that situation. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian energy sector is collapsed. Their cities are dark. And they have no money, none.

Their cities are dark and probably cold. Cold. The Rada was told to pass a budget. I'm not going to pass a budget when you don't have any money. And Zelensky's government is falling apart. So this strategy of holding on isn't going to work. And so you'll see the more desperate things become for the Ukrainians, the more harsh and shrill the rhetoric will be out of Europe. But be rest assured, Europe can do nothing to back their words up.

Well, their latest stunt, and then we'll jump to the killings in the Caribbean. I'm sorry to say that so flippantly, but that's what it is. Their latest stunt, which came out of the meeting of Mertz, Macron, Starrmer, and Zelenskyy attend Downing Street on Monday was new elections in Ukraine, monitored and security guaranteed by NATO. I mean, could you imagine Putin consenting to that? Could you imagine Trump consenting to that? No. There will be elections in Ukraine. The elections will come after the capitulation of Zelensky. The elections have already been organized conceptually by the Russians. They know who the candidates are. They know how they want to facilitate it. They know what the outcomes are. That's what you get to do when you win a war.

People are like, that's terrible. Well, you know, the United States created military government to occupy Germany around 1943. And so as we rolled into Germany, every town, every city that we occupied, a military government moved in that had been preparing to occupy that city, that town for several years now. And we had a black list of Germans that were going to be arrested, a gray list of Germans that were going to be monitored, and a white list of Germans that we were going to work with. That's what victors get to do. They get to dictate the outcome. And this is what Russia is going to do in Ukraine. So I'm not worried about any of this stuff. Europe has no ability to do anything without the backing of the United States.

And if you just read the National Security Strategy of the United States put out by the Trump administration a week ago today, Europe's on the wrong path. Right, correct. Civilizational erasure. So I don't think Trump's ready to give Europe the sacred vow that Joe Biden did about Article 5. In fact, Scott Bessett, the Secretary of Treasury, said something fascinating the other day. He said, if Russia attacks NATO, a NATO country, the United States may consider to sell weapons to NATO, but that's it. We're not going to war for NATO.

People need to understand that. We're done with this organization because we recognize that NATO is the bad guys. Russia is the group that we want to have strategic stability with. We need strategic stability so we can do what we want to do in the Western Hemisphere and what we want to do in the Pacific. NATO, Europe needs to wake up to that, that they're asking the Trump administration, to ditch their entire national security strategy, to reverse course on policy prerogatives that Trump isn't going to do. Moving to the killings in the Caribbean, federal law defines shipwrecked as persons in peril

at sea. Admiral Bradley, for whatever reason, you can perhaps speculate or articulate, rejected that definition and ordered the shipwrecked to be murdered on October 2nd. This is indisputable. This is from people who heard his, he didn't use the word murdered, of course, who heard his eight-hour testimony before Congress last week. What should become of this next in light of this rejection of the obligation to rescue the shipwreck. And I don't want to lose sight, Scott,

and I know you don't either, of the big picture. We're talking about rescuing two people. The whole thing is a criminal act, the concept of killing people that are non-combatants. Yeah, I think we need to start with that there. You know, there are so many people now. I mean, social media is a very frustrating thing because while there are the opportunities to have informed discussions and dialogues

and share information, it's also full of just people who shouldn't be invited to any conversation, ignorant people. If I hear one more, you know, vet bro or some, you know, want to be tough guy who calls himself a Reagan conservative saying, this is what I voted for, you do understand that doesn't matter, that your vote doesn't change the law. I mean, that's why we have a constitution so that we have a rule of law and mob rule won't sweep in. That's why we're due process to protect, you know, people who have been accused of crimes from lynch mobs. So I don't care that this is what you voted for.

Nobody who has any authority cares either, you know, and for those people say, they're drug runners. We know, why are we? Guys, it doesn't matter what you think. It's the law. And you do understand that narco-trafficking is not a death penalty. We intercept guys running drugs all the time in the United States and on the seas. We don't kill them. We arrest them.

What you're saying is because they're moving drugs now, we get to kill them. That's not what U.S. law is. And there's no military rules that allow you to do this. They're a drug. We get to kill. No, you don't. A shipwreck person could be a pirate. It could be a terrorist.

It could be anything. When they are shipwrecked at sea, they're protected. That's what the law says. You don't get to kill them. And what's happened now, we'll get into Bradley in just a second, though. There's a chilling effect. You know, and I think it was November 13th. Hank Seth announced Southern Spear, this big military operation.

But things have slowed down considerably. Why? Because the military started to ask questions, tough questions, about every aspect of this operation. everything they've been ordered to do. The military is starting to say, we need additional judicial review here. All the way up to the top,

the president has signed certain findings that have a very creative interpretation of defining a combatant and all this stuff. At the end of the day, you can't make somebody who is jaywalking the equivalent of an armed bank robber. And yet that's what we're trying to do here and say these guys run in these drugs. And I have every reason to believe that these aren't fishing boats.

I mean, I'll explain that in a second. I believe the U.S. government, when they say, we know what's on those boats. And I'll explain why I believe that. But we don't get to reinvent the law. The military has been asked to break the law. And these officers and men took an oath uphold and defend the Constitution. They know what the rule of law is. They know what their obligations are under the law.

war, and now they're starting to ask the questions. And this is why you saw the premature resignation of the Admiral who commanded Southern Command. That's the guy responsible for the whole area. He resigned. Why? The speculation is that he was not going to carry out patently unlawful orders, which now begs the question, why was Bradley doing this? Why is J-Soc, America's premier joint special operations guy? These are the tier one guys that do hostage rescue. would do all the sexy mate for television stuff. They went in and they got Osama bin Laden and they got, you know, Baghdadi and they get all the bad guys. Why are they involved in this?

Because nobody else is going to do it. Because they can be tasked under, I think it's Article 10 or Article 51. One of them is for conventional military forces. The other one is for the CIA. And J-Soc has the ability under law to be sheep-dipped as CIA to operate outside of the military chain of command. So Bradley, the head of J-Socke, is running this operation. One of the reasons why he's there is that the intelligence being used,

and the reason why is SEAL Team 6, you have to ask yourself, why is SIL Team 6 doing this? I mean, we have a drone targeting a boat and a helicopter firing a hellfire missile. Where does SEAL Team 6? Because Silt Team 6 has a unit called Black Squatter. And Black Squadron is their intelligence and surveillance unit. And these are the guys that are on the ground in Venezuela right now gathering the intelligence about what's on those boats. And these guys are very, very good.

And they will have video, audio, physical samples. They will have biometric data. They know who's on the boats. They know what orders they've received. They know what's in the boats. And they transmit. But their existence, the mere fact that they exist, exist, you know, is, it wouldn't be talked about it.

Why are you talking about Scott? Well, because it's in the public domain, therefore, it's there. And you have to ask yourself, why is Sill Team 6 involved? This is why, because the intelligence that's being used for these boats is closely compartmented, and the only people who are allowed to know about the existence of Black Squadron and any intelligence they collect is Sill Team 6, developed, dev group out of Damneck. And so that's why Steel Team 6 is involved. They're the ones who are launching the drones.

They have an ISR capability. They launch these drones, and these drones have a laser designation. The drones know where to go because they have trackers on the boats, and they're designating that. But they're the kill chain. And then the kill chain, the intelligence involved in that, has to go up to somebody who is cleared for this intelligence. And that's where the commander of J-Soc comes at, Bradley. So Bradley is the one that's involved. because otherwise, there's no reason for the commander of J-Soc to be involved in this,

and there's no reason for SIL Team 6 to be involved in this. This is a Coast Guard operation. But because the president— Why are these killers involved? Because the president has given orders to kill them all. Look, President Trump was in Quantico when Hakeseth gave that ridiculous speech. And that speech was, forget about the rules of—you know, rules of engagement. We are a lethal, maximum lethality. We're here to kill, kill, kill.

And he's done this repeatedly. And Trump came in afterwards and basically said, if you don't agree with this, get out of here, leave. And Trump has made statements about we're here to kill these people. And he laughs about it. You know, we're going to, in the national security strategy document that was just published in there, they say that we are turning drug running into a, in action with lethal consequences and we're giving the military the ability to, you know, use lethal force. That's an illegal order, an unlawful order in writing. And this is with the president's signature. So the president's given the order. Nobody's saying no. Somebody resigned, but Bradley said yes. And people say, well, what about Brad? I just want to remind people that Bradley

joined the seals in 1999. And he went through Green Squadron, which is their selection squadron. tactically competent. He was with Blue Team, when Blue Team deployed to Afghanistan in 2001. He was with the initial group of people. If you know anything about Roberts Ridge, Maco 30, Maco 31, and the performance of Blue Team, and the war crimes committed by Blue Team, Blue Team, is a war criminal outfit, and Bradley was part of it. He was part of as a junior officer.

officer. He participated in the war crimes. He participated in the cover up. And there's the thing. Why is Bradley doing what he's doing? Because this is what Seal Team 6 has done. Its entire existence is a fundamentally corrupt organization that has created an ethos of banditry. I mean, these people, you know, I think, you know, silver squadrons, the pirates or, you know, gold squadrons, you know, the crusaders with the swords. Red is the Red men. They carry axes. and they go around. They canoe people split their heads open, ask Robert O'Neill, the man who didn't kill Osama bin Laden,

took credit for it, though. He went in there instead of killing the man. He just shot him in the forehead to split his head open because that's the Redmond's signature. And then there's the Blue Squadron. And Bradley was part of it. They've committed war crimes everywhere. And Bradley was a part of Blue Squadron from 1999 until 2015.

He's committed a horrendous number of war crimes, and that's his ethos. That's the way he operates. That's the way the SEALs operates. these people have any fidelity to the constitution and the federal law? No, none whatsoever. They cover it up. There's a book out there, a code over country that goes into great detail about this. The seals have long since, collectively, a long since foregone any notion that they are loyal to the constitution or the rule of law. They are a banded organization, a pirate

organization of killers who get off on killing and when they get called out they protect each other they rally around one another they put code over country they think it's being more important to protect a seal that it is to protect the rule of law and as a result horrific war crimes have taken place all around the world um you know the the guy who uh was involved in roberts red's fight i can't remember his last name right now but he was a lieutenant commander why is a lieutenant the commander on the ground because he wants to get bloodied. And he was so frustrated by what happened, Vic Heider, I think his name is,

Vic Heider, so frustrated by what happened, the defeat of the seals on the, on Talcangor that he participated in a raid on a, on a convoy. It turned out it to be a wedding party. And they shot it up, got off the helicopters, and he went down the ditch and shot, wounded civilians,

executed them so they couldn't talk. Because they didn't want any survivors. they didn't want any witnesses. That's still Team 6. That's Blue Team. Vic Heider was with Blue Team. Bradley was there. Bradley is one of the guys that covered it up.

Is Hegeseth aware of these criminals in the military? He has to be. I mean, I mean, I can't sit here and personally say that Higgs Seth, but in his position, he has to know what I know. Because what I know, everybody knows. Everybody who's ever touched these organizations knows this about the seals. They're a fundamentally corrupt organization. Are there good seals out there?

I don't know. That's like asking if there's good cops on the Baltimore Police Department, when we know that the Baltimore Police Department plants evidence to falsely, you know, convict people. If you're a cop and you're not planning the evidence, but you know that some cops are doing it and you're remaining silent, you're not a good cop. There's a lot of seals out there that haven't committed war crimes, and it won't.

But they know that there's seals who have, and they remain silent because it's code over country. And I condemn every seal. And I know that I'm going to piss a lot of seals off, but I don't care. I've been working with you guys since, God, 1991. And actually earlier than that, 1986. And you've never been anything but a bunch of brutal folks. laws, lawless thugs, or do whatever the hell you want. Is everybody in that chain of command guilty of a war crime from the President of the United States

down to the pilot of the helicopter or whoever in the helicopter pressed a button that released the missile that killed the people on the boat? You know, you get into what's called the killed chain. To be guilty of a war crime, you have to intentionally you know, know your violation. I'm obeying orders doesn't lie. But in the way the U.S. military works is because we are all trained on the law of war, we are to assume that every order given to us is a lawful order.

And unless we can demonstrably show that it's not a lawful order, then, you know, we need. to obey that order. Now, you want to make the call on your own? It's a career-ending choice. You know, I've made career-ending decisions because it's the right thing to do. But you can't ask everybody. So until you review the evidence and you know what people were told, you know, I can't sit here and absolutely say, I will say that. You're instructed, you're instructed to kill unarmed non-combatant civilians. Isn't that pretty basic? that it's wrong?

If I'm a helicopter pilot, though, and I've been told that I'm firing it on a laser designate on that it's a lawful target. I don't have the target. I can't see the target. Oh, you may not know what the target is. Okay. Somebody along that line from Pete Hegseth to Frank Bradley on down, at some point people knew who was being in the intelligence chain.

For instance, the drone operators giving the feed to the staff. You know, Bradley was in a command center. Um, there are video screens. There should be lawyers right there. Uh, there should be operators right there. Uh, the people in the kill chain. And at any given point, somebody should have stood up and said, no, no, no, we're not doing this. Um, sorry, Admiral, those men are shipwrecked, the definition. And a lawyer will come in and say, no, I've determined that they are combatants. That's when you say, put it in writing. And I'm putting my objection in writing. And, um, I'm saying no. And you force. issue right now. Nobody did that. Right. Somebody may have said, why are we doing this? And then, you know, because according to the Washington Post, New York Times, there was, you know, a lawyer president who said, no, this is good.

But I understand these lawyers are picked. Remember, in Guantanamo, we had a lot of military lawyers that said it was okay to do what they do in Guantan, to violate, you know, they were wrong. The Supreme Court has come out and said they were wrong. Correct, correct. So just because you're a lawyer doesn't mean that. what you come out with is good and sound. And there are politicized lawyers. And that's one of the problems with the Department of Defense today with somebody like Pete Higgseth as a secretary of war,

is that it's politicized. If you're somebody who isn't seen as facilitating the slaughter, then you're a troublemaker and you'll be removed and you'll be replaced by somebody who is going to facilitate the slaughter. So you get nothing but yes, men. That's not good for the military. So what will happen next? If Trump doesn't fire Hagseth, if Congress, rolls over, the House of Representatives already has, nothing will happen. This will continue. Yeah. If there's no consequences, then they'll get away with it. It's up to Congress right now to, and I'm sorry to say it, but Bradley has to be tried and brought to justice. Now, the president may seek to pardon him, but that act alone will, you'll create, again, what I want right now is the

chilling effect. I know this is sedition. People are like, oh, you're being seditious. No. Sorry, I'm not. I'm not. Not sedition at all. Your sedition is advocating violence to overthrow the government. That's not what you're doing. You're advocating rule of law. Yeah. Mark Kelly, you know, was accused, and five other Democrats were accused of sedition for daring to suggest that military officers fail to obey an illegal order. Bradley's probably wishing that he had listened to the seditious six. It was Pete Hegseth, who in 2016 or 19 have made the same statement because it's just so blatantly obvious what your obligations are under the law of war bradley violated his obligations he is a disgrace he is a

shame um he should be arrested and he should be tried reduced in rank and i just want to remind people that under the uh war crimes act passed by congress i think in 1996 um a war crime under the act is a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions. And a grave violation is defined by actions that lead to the illegal deaths of protected people. These shipwrecked people were protected and Bradley ordered actions that resulted in their deaths. If found guilty, the mandatory sentence is either life imprisonment or death. That's how serious this is for all of you who said, this is what I voted for. Really? You voted for this? You voted for murder. No, you didn't. We'll end it there, my dear friend. Thank you very much. Thanks for all of your intellectual

honesty coupled with your military experience and understanding in the manner in which you brought this to the four, Scott. I too am getting beaten up because of my views, which are identical to yours, but so be it. Somebody's got to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, and we're doing so on this show and elsewhere, where I believe we are deeply appreciated. Thank you, my dear friend. Have a great weekend. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks, Judge. Of course. The end of the day, the end of the week. Tomorrow, four o'clock with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.

Thank you. Thank you.