Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : How We Know Ukraine's End Is Near.

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Scott Ritter : How We Know Ukraine's End Is Near.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, September 8, 2025. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on how do we know that the end is near in Ukraine. But first this.

My friends, if you care about your liberty and your right to control your own future, you need to hear about this. From October 10th to 12th, Mikkel Thorpe, host of the Expat Money Show, is bringing together top experts from around the world for the expat money online summit, and it's completely free to attend. You'll learn how to legally protect your wealth, secure second residences and citizenships, reduce your tax burden, and own property abroad, all to safeguard your freedom. This year's focus is on Latin America where opportunity is booming. Argentina is shifting to free markets. El Salvador is undergoing a dramatic transformation, and Panama and Paraguay are offering simple residency

programs. A plan B is no longer optional. It's essential. Reserve your free ticket at expatmoney summit.com. And if you want VIP access with special perks, including lifetime repeat, play access and exclusive VIP panels, use promo code judge for 20% off your upgrade. That's expatmoneysummit.com promo code judge. Scotty, welcome here, my dear man, and thank you very much for your time. Before we get into Ukraine, some other issues that I want to mention and solicit your opinion on, How dangerous is it for the President of the United States to use the military to kill people just by characterizing them as narco-terrorists? People have not been charged with a crime, obviously not been convicted and aren't even in the United States.

Well, first of all, it's a violation of international law. It's a violation of the United Nations Treaty on the Sea. I know the United States doesn't, we haven't signed it or, you know, ratified it, but we said we will abide by it, but apparently we don't because we're killing 11 people. We don't even know their names. I mean, if we know their names, we haven't published their names. We haven't published any information that shows the affiliation. The ship they were on can't reach the United States. It's a fishing boat. If you take a look at photographs of Venezuelan fishing boats, this is exactly the boat there is with the same outboard motor configuration. It can't get to the United States. It can cruise off the coast of Venezuela. And, you know, so 11 people were killed. Who are they? Do we know that they're what the president, and even if they were what the president says, what had the due process? You know, aren't we obligated to, you know, stop the boat, confirm the identities, charge them with crimes, process them in a court of law before administering justice? Or do we just go out and

out and murder people, because this is what this was. This was murder. It's not, you know, a targeted, you know, direct action operation to get, because you can't tell me who they are. Plus, did they fire on anybody? I mean, was the U.S. military an imminent threat, imminent danger? No, there was nothing here. There's no evidence of any weapons on boards. This both posed a threat to nobody, except the hypothetical threat that they were carrying narcotics. But where are the narcotics? Where's the proof? Where's the evidence? If the president can do this, how do we know there wasn't an American citizen on board. We don't know that. We don't know anything about the 11 people. They're just dead. So, yeah, this is extraordinarily dangerous. It's not who we are and what we are as a nation.

I heard Sebastian Gorka, not exactly a model of fidelity to the Bill of Rights, articulate on the network where I work that foreign persons don't have the same rights as Americans. Well, if you're talking about the right to vote, you're right. if you're talking about life, liberty, and property, due process applies to all persons. Madison expressly used the word persons, not American citizens. So, of course, these people have the same rights to due process. If they really believed that these were drug dealers, and if they really believed that this speedbook could travel 1,300 miles from the point where they attacked it to the closest part of the United States of America, why didn't they wait until it got into U.S. waters and then stop the boat and search it. And if there were drugs, seized the drugs,

and arrest the people on the boat. Why? Because Trump wanted to send some kind of a message, according to Marco Rubio. He wanted to send a message to other drug dealers. This is what will happen to you. Oh, Mr. Secretary, what was the legal authority? But you have to ask the White House. Mr. Secretary of Defense or War, we'll talk about that in a minute. What was the legal authority for you blowing that boat out of the order? Oh, you have to ask the White House. When the White House was asked, the President said, well, I'm the President of the United States. I can do whatever I want. Well, that, of course, is wrong. He can only do what the Constitution authorizes him to do, which is to wage war after the Congress has declared it or to enforce the laws that Congress has

written, many of which prescribed due process. Is the proposed name change from Department of Defense the Department of War, just symbolic or substantive? I believe it's substantive. I believe it's happening at a time and place where the President of the United States and his administration are transitioning away from the old way of doing business to a new way of doing business.

And we've already seen evidence of what this new way of doing business is. Total disregard for the niceties of law, due process anything it basically is we're the united states we can do anything we want anytime we want to whomever we want and we don't have to explain ourselves to anybody let alone the american people or the american congress who by the way it don't seem to be asking too many questions about this i'd like to know what the congressional authorization for the use of military force was in this case but i don't see congress you know raising their hands and demanding

demanding hearing. But there's something else going on too. At the same time that this is happening on the Secretary of War, Pete Hegset's desk, is the new draft of the National Security Strategy document, the document that lays out the national security priorities of the United States. And we had a hint back in May when Hegg Seth was talking about this, that this would be different than the past. It would be a lot more emphasis placed on defending the American homeland, Fortress America. But at that time, they were still talking about detangling from Europe, Middle East, and pivoting to the Pacific to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. But the new draft that's on his table for consideration de-emphasizes even this pivot to the Pacific, placing the

primary emphasis on homeland defense, Fortress America. And with a heavy emphasis on federalization of the National Guard and using the National Guard as a tool, of policy implementation inside the United States. Look, Washington, D.C. is already under military occupation. Los Angeles is under military occupation. Chicago is about to go under military occupation. New York City. The President of the United States is using the United States military,

the Department of War, to wage war against the American people. And if this doesn't disturb you, then nothing will. Moving to the other side of the Atlantic President, the French president, Macron, has to appoint his fifth prime minister in two years. Are you surprised that Keith Kirstarmer's government is teetering on the brink? Frederick Mertz's government is teetering on the brink on the brink, and the French government has collapsed? No, and I expect more.

What I'm surprised is that there hasn't been violence and destruction. I'm not encouraging it. I'm glad that there isn't. But the level of societal collapse is taking place in all three of the four named nations is unprecedented. We are looking at the total loss of sovereignty in France, in England, and in Germany. It's an internal loss of sovereignty, meaning that what was the French nation, the British nation, the German nation, has been lost to a massive influx of immigrants who do not declare their fealty to the nation-state of either France, England, or Germany, but in many cases, to Islam. And again, I'm not anti-Islam. I believe in freedom of religion, but the last time I checked, Germany had a Christian foundation, France Christian foundation, England, a Christian foundation. And now to basically lose large swazier territory to Islamists who show no law. loyalty to, you know, the nation state, no desire to assimilate in every desire to impose their version of Sharia law on the totality of a population. You combine this total lack of control over

the nation with declining economy, collapsing economy. No, this doesn't surprise me at all. Again, what surprised me is the passivity of the former. sovereign people of France, England, and Germany in the face of just losing control of their country to people who don't consider themselves to be either French, British, or German. I think you're going to see a radical change in Germany once AFD comes to power, particularly on this issue. They're riding a very popular, the crest of a very popular wave. who spent the weekend trashing Russian President Putin, his personal popularity, is sinking like a rock in a pond. Before we spent too much time on Europe, we'll get there in a minute.

I forgot to ask you about this. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the government will scrutinize very carefully the exercise of free speech by all applicants for visas from Central America to see if they've said. anything that's even marginally pro-Chinese. What is this all about? This is synophobia. It's like Russophobia, the irrational fear of all things China. Again, I mean, I've said this over and over again. If we don't like what somebody's saying, then we're in a battle of ideas. And what I would encourage Marco Rubio and everybody else in the Trump administration to do is come up with better ideas.

You know, the fact that you have people out there saying things that might be construed as pro-China shouldn't bother Americans at all because we should have better ideas. We should be able to trump whatever these people are saying with ideas backed by, you know, policies, by actions. But we don't. What this shows is a vacuum of ideas, a vacuum of policy on the part of the Trump administration. And all they have is muscle, bullying, to intimidate, to silence. And while I'm not pro-China in any way, shape, or form, I am free speech, an absolutist on free speech. And whenever a government fears free speech, it means that the government has lost control of the narrative. What is it with the Secretary of State Rubio and Latin America?

I mean, he praised to the skies the murder of these 11 Venezuelans and joined in with Pete Higgs' threats. about the 2,200, it may be even more Marines that were aboard ship off the coast of Venezuela. What are they planning? What are they plotting? What's their problem with the people of Latin America choosing their own forms of government? Well, Marco Rubio comes from a Cuban immigrant family. His father, you know, lived in Cuba, fled under the former dictator. was a supporter of the dictator, by the way. And Rubio has taken on this staunch anti-communist posture, as many Cuban Americans who live in Florida have. This is his political base to beat that drum. Cuba is bad. Communism is bad. And by extension, Venezuela has become bad because Venezuela

gets support from the Cuban government, and now he has turned his eyes on what he calls the Chavez Maduro regime. Hugo Chavez, the former president, Nicholas Maduro, the current president. Since 2016, I think Rubio was elected in 2010. In 2016, he was given chairmanship of a committee dealing with Latin America with the Western Hemisphere in totality. And he's used that as a platform to, you know, create his foreign policy credentials. He's been speaking out against Venezuela for some time now encouraging from the earliest days in 2018, saying that, for instance, Maduro's close ties with Russia makes Venezuela a national security threat to the United States worthy of military intervention. And he's been articulating the case for military intervention

ever since that time. And today we have a situation where he's not just Secretary of State, but he's also national security advisor, which means that, you know, he can do things outside the scrutiny of Congress, you know, under an executive privilege as the national security advisor, such as covert action, et cetera. The last time we saw somebody dual had it like this, it was Henry Kissinger under Richard Nixon and later Jerry Ford. But we saw in, you know, with Allende in Chile, what happens when you get a Secretary of State who can say one thing as Secretary of State, but do another as a National Security Advisor. What we got was a CIA back coup against Alende's rule. And what we're seeing right now in Venezuela,

is an effort by the United States spearheaded by Marco Rubio to remove Maduro from power. We are on the cusp of all-out war with Venezuela. I wouldn't be surprised by a month's end if the United States hasn't launched a massive strike seeking to decapitate Maduro, eliminate his security services, and encourage some sort of CIA-back coup. Wow. You mentioned earlier war on Chicago. Chris, can you put up the full screen? This is from Donald Trump's official truth social.

I love the smell of deportations in the morning. This is, of course, a play on words from Apocalypse now where Robert DeValle's character said, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War. How do you think the Kremlin or Beijing view the American president when they see stuff like that? I mean, I'm loath to speak on behalf of either one of them. I will say that this isn't the kind of, what I've been told by Russian diplomats over the years is what they want from America's predictability.

They want stability and predictability. They would prefer America and America that adheres to specified rules and regulations laws. What you see when you see a president like that, you see a. child man, not a real man, but a child man. This is a man who's living a fantasy life. And it's a man who's unpredictable. I mean, if this guy won't respect the American Constitution, if he's willing to rename the Department of Defense is the Department of War and then unleash it on the people of Chicago, how can the Russians sit there and say, well, what is he going to do with the next treaty we want to negotiate? What good is a treaty to a man who is going to play as if he is God,

as if he can do anything he wants? This is extraordinarily dangerous in destabilizing. I wish that he had better advisors around him and people who would take control of his social media posting because that right there is an affront to every American. If you're not insulted by the fact that an American president is talking about unleashing the Department of War, that's the U.S. military, men and women who took an oath, they'll pull and defend the Constitution and defend Americans against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and he's unleashing them on an American city, on Chicago. It's crazy. I mean, I don't care, you know, I mean, I do care what the crime rate is.

And yes, I'd like to see efforts undertaken to lower the crime rate to bring the city, you know, within the boundaries of the rule of law. But it has to be done within the rule of law, meaning that you can't break the law, violate human, you know, civil rights and liberties in the defense of, you know, defending the Americans from crime. It's, it's sickening, to be honest, sickening what's happening. Is that maverick agreeing with you or disagreeing with you? Well, it depends if he's barking at the FBI agents approaching my house, then he's defending me. If he's barking at the neighbors walking their dog past the door, he's objecting to that. Or he just might be saying that my master has raised his voice and I'm upset. So we don't know.

I need to probably calm down a little bit. But that image really torts me. I mean, it should torque every American. We can't tolerate this as Americans. We can't. How close to achieving its. stated military objectives in Ukraine is the Russian military? Look, Vladimir Putin says the war is over. It's reached an inevitable conclusion.

The Ukrainian military is incapable of offensive action. It only can defend. It's doing so weakly. You know, the president of Russia has never committed to such a forceful statement in the past. Now he's done. doubling down on this saying that the Russian military is in control of the situation. And he said that this war will continue to its inevitable conclusion until which time Ukraine either accepts Russia's terms or the Russian military achieves Russia's objectives. It's a very forceful statement backed up by reality. The reality on the ground is that the Russians are dominating, advancing.

And the reality in the air is that Russia can strike any target at once, any time at once, and there's nothing Ukraine can do. the Western air defenses have collapsed. Ukraine is out of air defense, out of money, out of weapons. We see General Siersky admit, I mean, publicly he's out there brought, you know, we launched a counterattack and we took over this much and that much, not anymore, but that's okay. But then he has to say in private, we're out of ammunition, we're out of weapons, and nobody's providing anything to us. We're in a lot of trouble. On top of that, you have, you know, the Ukrainians admit they're out of money. That means they're not only not

paying their soldiers, they're not paying their politicians, they're not paying the pensions, they're not paying firefighters, not paying anybody. They don't have anybody. We're looking at societal collapse as we speak. Is MI6 and CIA still attempting to identify Russian personnel and assets for the Ukrainians to arm to use to attack with whatever offensive weaponry they have remaining? I believe the answer is yes. I believe that MI6 is definitely in that business. I believe that the CIA can't be trusted. I mean, come on, Judge, let's just look at the facts. The lady who was briefing the President of the United States right before Alaska, the senior CIA expert on Russia, Julia Grabannis, I think her name is, she was the National Intelligence Officer

who managed the 2017 intelligence community assessment that said Donald Trump is an asset of Russia. She led the charge on that. So this is a lady who hates Donald Trump, views him as a Russian asset, hates Vladimir Putin, hates Russia, and she's the lead briefer to the president before he goes to Alaska. And John Radcliffe, the director of the CIA, knew this. They fired her. Tulsa Gabbard took away her clearance, rightfully so, for anybody who conspires against a sitting president. But the fact is the CIA is corrupt as the day as long, they don't obey orders.

And when you put in 20 CIA stations inside bases inside Ukraine and authorize those bases to carry out a wide range of activities, ranging from intelligence collection to direct action, covert action, you know, how do you know that they've stopped? Because they lie. They just lie and they don't like this president. They despise this president. So they're conspiring behind his back. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the CIA was at a minimum passing intelligence to the British. which they're allowed to do, who then passed it to the Ukrainians. Is NATO in Finland a threat to the national security of Russia?

In theory, I mean, it's a very short distance from the Finnish Russian border to St. Petersburg, the second largest city of Russia, across the way is the Kola Peninsula, where Russia has one of the largest concentration of strategic assets, you know, stationed. And so by converting Finland into a NATO country and then putting NATO bases on Finland, the bases that could house strike assets that now are a short distance from not only the Kola Peninsula, but St. Petersburg, yes, it is a threat, strategic threat to Russia. This is why Russia is building a 70,000-man military district. Before they didn't have that, they had a nice open border with Finland, not a defended border, the free traffic back and forth. Now the Russians are saying, look, you're part of NATO.

So we're building this 70,000 man force. And yeah, it might seem big, but see, we don't plan on just sitting here if you attack us. We're taking Helsinki and everything with it. You know, this is how the Russians respond. They're not going to play defensive here. They won't initiate an attack. But if Finland thinks that they have the backing of NATO to cause trouble with Russia, Finland may find itself without a capital in the near future.

Finland was quiet, prosperous, free, and now this. Why would they bother joining NATO? Why would they give up the neutrality and prosperity they've enjoyed since the end of World War II? One of the problems here is the way that the Finnish political and economic elite have been taken in by, you know, the same forces, whether you want to call it European Deep State, you want to call it the New World Economic Order, whatever. But they've been brought, you know, they've been absorbed by the European political and economic thinking of the elites. They,

you know, have bought into the notion that Russia is a threat. I want to remind people that Finland's neutral because the Soviet Union opted not to absorb all of Finland, you know, that end of the Second World War when Finland fought on the side of the Nazis, the Germans. The Finns participated in the siege of then Leningrad, resulting in the deaths of more than a million Soviet citizens. And the Russians were kind enough at the war to allow Finland to remain a sovereign state. As long as Finland embraced the notion of neutrality in perpetuity. Now, I'm just a marine, and that's a lot of syllables, but perpetuity means forever. And Finland obviously has violated this. So this is why when people start speaking about Ukrainian neutrality, a European

definition of neutrality. The Russians are saying, no, we don't accept this because look at Finland, look at Sweden, look at Austria, look at Switzerland. Neutrality doesn't mean what it used to mean. Finland did this not because the Finnish people bought in this, but because the Finnish political and economic elites sold their soul to a European ideal that, frankly speaking, doesn't exist. How close do you believe Benjamin Netanyahu is to starting another war against Iran? Well, I mean, a desperate man does desperate things, but what we're seeing, there's some fascinating documentaries coming out of Iran where the Iranians are interviewing pilots, they're interviewing missile men, they're interviewing people who are involved in this war, and we're starting to flesh out, you know, the Iranian perspective. You know, the Israeli aircraft, especially in the latter phases of this conflict,

we're trying to come in and line themselves up for a successful launch against Iran. And they had to break off their attacks many times because the Iranian Air Force is back and forth going on that many people are unaware of. Iran was not defenseless. And then the missilemen speak about on occasion, you know, completing their mission while under fire, meaning that they've been wounded by fragmentation bombs, but they continue their mission to fire the missiles off. We're seeing a defiant Iran that's coming out and basically going on record saying that, you know, you didn't defeat us. We held our own. You're the one that asked for the ceasefire, and the next time it ain't going to end so well for you. And I think that this is a reality that's being absorbed by the Israeli military elite who understand that, you know, Israel's defenses have not improved.

take a look at Yemen, firing drones and missiles that are penetrating the Israeli missiles defense shield on a daily basis. And these are rather primitive attacks compared to what Iran were bring to bear. So no matter how desperate Benjamin Netanyahu is, I think you're starting to see a lot of pushback from the military, who are starting to release, by the way, video that shows that many of the claims that the Iranians made about hitting strategic targets that Israel initially denied, the Israelis now are saying, no, they hit them. Yeah, they They hit that. They hit this.

Why would they do that? I think it's to put public pressure on Netanyahu, don't do this again. Scott Ritter, thank you, my dear man. Thank you for letting me go across the board on everything from Chicago to Tehran. Much appreciated. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week. Okay, thanks, Judge. Thank you, Scott.

Coming up tomorrow, a very busy day for you. At 8 in the morning, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, at 10 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Dr. O at 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor, at one in the afternoon, Scott Horton, at two in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal, at three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kodkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.