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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 25th,
2023. It's about 1.40 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Here are
your hot topics and it's a broad variety of issues,
starting with something that gives me no joy whatsoever to discuss. As we speak, the former
president of the United States, Donald Trump, is on trial for rape, rape in New York City. This is
not a criminal case. This is a civil case in which a lady by the name of E. Jean Carroll, once a very
popular gossip columnist in the New York City area, alleges that in the 1990s,
Donald Trump raped her in the ladies' dressing room of a very highly regarded and well-known
department store. You've probably heard of it called Bergdorf Goodman. Trump has denied the allegation. How can this be happening 40 years
later? Well, she accused Donald Trump of raping her and he denied it. And in denying it, he made
some very negative comments about her, not the least of which was that she's a liar,
and then she sued him for defamation. Then the state of New York, in its infinite wisdom,
opened up the statute of limitations for lawsuits on sexual assaults by surviving adults. So that
gave her the opportunity to bootstrap not only her defamation litigation against him, but now a litigation against the rape itself.
He, of course, denies this.
At a deposition, he denied it.
He confused a picture of this lady, Jean Carroll.
He thought it was his wife at the time.
But aside from that, he made clear and convincing denials. The problem is he's
not showing up for the trial. The trial was in state court in New York. Trump's lawyers moved
it to federal court in New York. Trump's lawyers then attempted to move it to federal court in
Washington, D.C. Why Washington, D.C.? Well, they argued that because
Trump was president of the United States at the time, he made these words that allegedly defamed
Ms. Carroll, among which are, she's a liar. He was the sitting president of the United States,
entitled to say whatever he wanted at a press conference, and therefore the Department of
Justice should defend him,
and if a jury finds there's any verdict against him, it should be paid by the federal government.
The courts have ruled against that. So then the case was sent back from D.C. to federal court in New York, and after numerous delays, it began with jury selection today. Will Donald Trump show up
to take the witness stand and deny that he raped this lady?
Apparently not. Apparently he and his lawyers are satisfied with playing a videotape of his
testimony at his deposition in which he denied that he raped her. She, of course, will have her
testimony. There are no eyewitnesses. There are other witnesses in the case.
There are women who claim they were similarly treated by Trump. There's the infamous Access
Hollywood tape. And there are friends of the plaintiff to whom she made statements to the
effect of this guy raped me at the time of the rape. She never reported it to the police. There
was never a criminal prosecution. There was never a police investigation. I can't predict where it's going to
go, except it's before a very serious federal judge in a very serious federal court. And in
my opinion, he should show up and deny this, but that's apparently not what he's going to do.
When you don't take the witness
stand in a criminal case, of course, you have the right, the natural right to remain silent.
That right is expressly protected by the Fifth Amendment. The judge will tell the jury, the
defendant chose not to testify. You may not construe anything from his making that choice.
You may not assume that he's guilty.
You may not speculate as to what he would have said if he took the stand,
because that right is an absolute right.
I have given that charge many times in criminal cases.
In civil cases, it's different.
When the defendant does not testify, or as in this case,
when the defendant doesn't even show up to the trial,
you get the opposite charge. The judge will say to the jury, Donald Trump's the defendant in this case, when the defendant doesn't even show up to the trial, you get the opposite charge.
The judge will say to the jury, Donald Trump's the defendant in this case.
And he's not here.
And he didn't testify.
And you can assume from his failure to come in the courtroom and his silence that his testimony would be against his best interests.
You may assume that if he testified, you would
disbelieve him. That's a very, very harsh charge for judges to give, but they do give that. I have
when defendants don't show up. Here's what I wouldn't allow. I wouldn't allow other women to
testify that they've been abused by him because that is irrelevant to whether this particular abuse
happened. However, the state of New York has what's called the prior bad acts doctrine,
which allows plaintiffs or defendants to tell a jury about similar behavior
involving their adversary, and they can tell the jury about it.
So some other lady is going to come in and say, did the same thing to me in the Macy's
dressing, ladies dressing room. The judge is going to let them testify to that. I wouldn't,
I don't think it has anything to do with this case, but I'm not the judge in the case.
And this particular judge has exercised his discretion to allow that testimony.
Yesterday, President Biden hosted at the White House Teacher of the Year.
Take a look at this little piece here.
This is President Biden's statement that he issued.
He's holding hands with Rebecca.
Last name I don't remember.
She's the teacher of the year. Rebecca put the teacher's creed into words when she said,
quote, there is no such thing as someone else's child, close quote. Our nation's children are
our children. That's why our administration supports the teachers who care for them, signed President Biden.
What hogwash this is.
This is nothing but, hey, members of the teachers union, vote for me because I'll always back you against the boards of education that hire you.
Gary, put that up again, please.
This is nonsense.
There's no such thing as someone else's child.
Yes, there is. The children belong to the
parents until the children reach maturity. Our nation's children are our children. No, they're
not. The children belong to the parents. This is that left-wing progressive nonsense that government
schools can raise children. The government schools know what's better for children than the parents do.
This attitude, seemingly pleasant, seemingly benign, honoring in the Rose Garden of the White House the teacher of the year, this attitude belies a dangerous, dangerous belief.
And that belief is that the government knows what's best for children.
It doesn't.
The government tells boys they can become girls and girls they can become boys.
The government bans books.
The government tries to indoctrinate children.
Decisions about children's education should be made by the parents
and not by government
schools. Of course, in my world, there wouldn't be government schools. All schools would be
privately owned. They would be so inexpensive because they'd be competing with each other.
You'd be able to send your children to schools that you could afford and your taxes would be less
because the government wouldn't own the schools. Maybe that's fanciful on my part.
But I have to point out the danger of this attitude, that all children are ours.
No, they're not.
The children belong to the parents, Mr. President.
Why don't you recognize that?
I don't think you would have put your children, one of them is a mess, this crackpot Hunter, into the hands of the government when you were raising them.
All right, Hunter.
Hunter is ordered to appear in an Arkansas court for a paternity case after the mother of his baby demanded he be thrown in jail for refusing to hand over financial records.
I didn't know about this.
Not only does this guy have income tax problems, he has paternity problems. He has apparently
acknowledged that this baby in Arkansas, he is the father. But what he will not do is acknowledge,
is produce financial records that the judge ordered. So now a judge is going to,
has ordered him to appear. And if he doesn't appear, she'll sign an arrest warrant for him.
And if he doesn't appear in response to that arrest warrant, the son of the president of the
United States will quite properly be arrested and brought against his will to a court in Arkansas. I mean, if his name were Hunter Jones
instead of Hunter Biden, this wouldn't even be a story. But because he is the president's son,
and because there is apparently financial information about his financial involvement
with some public utility in Ukraine, and money from the the Chinese and money going to Biden relatives and
the implication that some of it went to the now president, this stuff is all very, very relevant.
And that's why I pointed out to you, there was a time when I didn't want to cover this. I thought
it was just, forgive me, but I got to say this, New York Post excess, New York Post sensationalism,
I don't believe it is. I believe the Post is onto something. And I believe that all of this
is going to come out when Hunter Biden is prosecuted. Now it turns out that Hunter Biden
and his good friends with Tony Blinken and his wife. All right. Tony Blinken is the Secretary of State.
Tony Blinken has been working for Joe Biden since Joe was a senator. When Joe Biden was spreading
the nonsense that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, same nonsense that George W.
Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell spread. Joe Biden was spreading it and who was helping him
to spread it? Joe Biden was the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Tony Blinken
was the chief of staff on the Foreign Affairs Committee and he was spreading it as well. So
Tony Blinken is a good friend of Joe Biden. It's not surprising he'd be friends with Hunter Biden laptop story is
Russian misinformation, and they did. 51 of them signed a now infamous letter, which was all over
the place in the last two weeks of the campaign. Did it affect any votes? Who knows? But the letter
now appears to be baloney. It appears it was just political claptrap. These people have a right to say what they want politically.
None of them was employed by the CIA at the time, although some of them had been undercover.
And so they didn't use their real names. I don't know if they use their real names on this letter.
We'll get a lot more about the letter from Larry Johnson when he's on the show,
either tomorrow or Thursday. But what's interesting is the connection between the
Secretary of State and Hunter Biden and the Secretary of State before he was Secretary of
State asking that a known falsehood be perpetrated and that the people perpetrating the known
falsehood were putting their reputations
as former officials in the intelligence community online. One of these people I've known since I was
a young lawyer in Newark, New Jersey, right out of law school, because he was also at the time,
Mike Chertoff. Mike went on to become the first director of the Department of Homeland Security.
Before it was even a department, it was an administrative agency.
And then he became the Secretary of Homeland Security.
He's also the former U.S. attorney in New Jersey, the chief federal prosecutor in New Jersey.
And he's also a former Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge.
That's the level of court right below the Supreme Court.
He put his reputation on the line by signing this letter.
And now the drafter of the letter is saying, ah, we all did it for political reasons to help Joe Biden get elected
because none of us can stand Donald Trump.
Were the contents of the letter true?
He didn't answer.
We'll see where all of this goes.
Prediction, this will affect Tony Blinken's tenure as the Secretary of State.
Whether you like him or not, I don't think he's going to be there much longer.
This will rattle the State Department. It's one thing to have Victoria Nuland arguing
in favor of an American invasion of Crimea. That's crazy and everybody knows it. It's quite another
to reveal that the Secretary of State was involved in so-called Russian misinformation and making up
stories about it during the Trump-Biden campaign.
Joe Biden hates assault weapons. He never had one in his hands and doesn't even know what they do.
My friend Stuart Varney, a great anchor at Fox Business, but raised in Great Britain where
nobody had guns, once said to me, why do you need an AR-15? I said, Stuart, put a banana in your mouth. Let me use the AR-15. Draw a line on the banana, and I'll slice the banana with the
weapon, with the ammo that comes out of the AR-15, right where that line is. What are you talking
about? Why would I do that? To demonstrate how accurate it is. It is a supremely accurate, fabulous self-defense weapon. Joe Biden wants to
make them illegal. Nothing's new about that. What is new is before Joe Biden was on his campaign
to make these weapons illegal, 55% supported the ban. Since Joe Biden has been campaigning, as he did back when he was
in the Senate, to make these high-powered, super accurate rifles, which he calls an assault weapon,
illegal, the percentage of Americans who approve of the ban has gone down to 46%.
So before he campaigned for the ban as president, 55%, now after he's been campaigning for the ban has gone down to 46%. So before he campaigned for the ban as president, 55%.
Now, after he's been campaigning for the ban for two years, down by nine points to 46%.
That will tell you something about Joe Biden's effectiveness or ineffectiveness on campaigning
for an assault weapons ban. I don't know what an assault weapon is because these are weapons that
the Secret Service carry. These are weapons that the state police in California who guard the
governor of California carry. I happen to know from friends involved in this work, these are
weapons that the state police who protect the governor
in New Jersey carry. These are super accurate weapons for self-defense. Why Joe Biden is on
an onslaught against them is because they look dangerous. And when the government bans them,
it doesn't save any lives. It just makes them more difficult to get.
But it lets the government say, look what we're doing to keep you safe. You're not keeping us safe. When you ban a weapon that honest law-abiding people know how to use, you deprive us of a means
to protect ourselves and our loved ones. I don't think Joe Biden will ever accept
that statement, but it's a truism. Don't believe me? Read John Lott, L-O-T-T. Read his book.
More guns equals less crime. Okay, those horrible Idaho slayings that occurred in a house off campus, off the University of Idaho campus. The defendant,
Brian Koberger, was a student at the university, a grad student. He's been arrested. He now
is having what's called a pretrial hearing. So at this hearing, the government has to lay out the evidence that
they have against him so that the court can decide if the evidence constitutes the crimes
that the government has charged. This also gives the defendant and his lawyers a window
into the government's case. Not every state in the union gives you this pre-trial hearing. In some
states, the government lays everything out, like New Jersey, everything out before a grand jury.
That's it. The grand jury indicts. When the indictment comes down, it's very detailed and
specific, not like indictments in New York. The Trump indictment was a joke, but it was followed
up with a statement of facts that explained the government's case. In the
federal system in New Jersey and in most states, these indictments have all the meat and potatoes,
as well as the bones, if you will, of what the defendant needs to know the government says he
did. In Idaho, you're entitled to a hearing at which the government puts its witnesses on the
stand. It's a mini trial. There's no jury there.
The judge is not deciding guilt or innocence. He's deciding, is there enough to go forward?
Does this constitute first-degree murder, or is it second-degree murder, or is it manslaughter,
or is it nothing? For that hearing, the defendant has subpoenaed another person in the house who was not killed.
Did you know there was another person in that house who was not killed?
Probably not.
Why not?
Because the version of events that person gave to the police exonerates this defendant, Brian Koberger.
Well, that person has left Idaho, now goes to school
in Nevada, and Koberger's lawyers have subpoenaed that person to compel her to come and testify at
this pretrial hearing. And you guessed it, she doesn't want to testify. And the reason she
doesn't want to testify is she doesn't want to go back to Idaho. She doesn't want to relive the horrible
events of that night. I'm sorry to say, sometimes you witness something you wish you hadn't seen.
You're standing at a stoplight in New York City. You see somebody killed either by a weapon or by
an automobile. You're stuck. You're a witness. The government is entitled to your testimony. You can be compelled
to testify. This woman was in a house in which four people were slaughtered. She was the fifth
person living in that house, unharmed, untouched. But what she saw and what she heard, according to
the defense lawyers, and according to what she told the police, she was interviewed three times by the police, helps to exonerate this defendant. She has a moral and a legal duty
to provide that testimony. Will she testify? Yes. Yes, they will arrest her. The Nevada police will
arrest her. She can be extradited to Idaho if she doesn't come voluntarily. I don't blame her
for not wanting to get involved. If I had relived a night like that, I wouldn't want to recount it.
But she has a moral duty to recount honestly what she learned from her senses, from what she heard,
what she saw, what she tasted, what she touched, what she smelled.
She has an obligation to recount that to the court, and the court will decide where it goes from there.
Okay.
Later on this week, the people you love to hear from.
Larry Johnson.
Can CIA agents lie publicly?
Do they get in trouble for it Colonel McGregor
and of course Scott Ritter you like all of this and I hope you do like and subscribe last night
I was on Newsmax I don't go on that much but I have a lot of friends there. I like the network. The anchor is Carl Higby, who
was a guest on my show when I was an anchor at Fox. And Carl and I talked about Tucker Carlson,
and I gave my thoughts about his departure from Fox. And then my producer, Gary Villapiano,
took that clip, it's just about two minutes or three minutes long of my interview on Newsmax
and put it on Judging Freedom. Wow. 150,000 of you watched it there. Well, that sends a message
to these networks. Where's Judge Napolitano? He's drawing more people on reruns than the network is
actually drawing live. So you can catch that there as well. If you go to Judge Knapp and go to videos,
you'll see this three-minute clip.
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