Judging Freedom - Trump Classified Doc Update_ Hunter Biden 2nd Amendment_ Desantis report

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 2nd, 2023. It's about 2.45 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Time for your hot topics, And they're all domestic. We've done so much Ukraine this week. All the hot topics that I'm going to go through now are domestic, and some of them are pretty hot. One involving an expansion of a criminal probe against former President Trump,

and the other, as you know, involving this tape recording with Trump's voice on it. I heard a little clip of the tape. There's no question that it is his voice. So here's what happened. And actually, this is a little gracious of Trump. I never heard of a former president doing this. His former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, I've known him for years since he was a member of Congress, is writing an autobiography about his 10 months as Donald Trump's chief of staff in the White House. Meadows producers or publishers, excuse me, publishers persuaded the former president and some of his senior people to sit around a table and just talk out loud about the 10 months that Mark was there and to allow one of them to tape record it. Mistake, Mr. President.

I wonder if you told your lawyers you were about to talk on tape. He probably didn't. You know the way he is. Anyway, the tape was running. They taped it. In the conversation where they were talking about everything under the sun

that happened in the last 10 months of Trump's presidency. That's the time period during which Mark Meadows was the chief of staff. Trump refers to a document that he has, which is a top secret classified, still classified, never declassified. And it contains NDI, national defense information. Now, you know the difference. The president, while the president can declassify, providing he goes through the procedures, can declassify a top secret document, can declassify any document that's classified.

I'm not talking about NDI yet. I'm talking about something that's stamped classified top secret. In order to do that, he has to tell the author of the document. The reason he has to tell the author of the document, remember the president doesn't write these documents, he receives them. You're going to hear a lot more about this when he's indicted, not if, when. The reason he has to tell the author of the document is because the author usually puts in the document the author's sources for the intelligence, and those sources can often be human beings who've been compromised. An Iranian agent also working for the CIA, a Mossad agent, the Israeli intelligence group, also working for the CIA. These are human beings who would be executed if their bosses found out that they had become double agents. So that's why the president, before declassifying, must tell the author, this is about to be declassified. The author then has

an opportunity to warn his sources or to negotiate with the president about, can you classify 90% of it and white out the name of this person who's very valuable to American intel? Okay, you get the point. The president can do that if he follows the rules. Can the president just think something is declassified and that makes it declassified? Absolutely not. What about NDI? Well, NDI is National Defense Information. That is always and everywhere unlawful for anyone to possess out of a secure government facility. Pardon me. Can it be declassified? It doesn't matter if it's declassified or not. If it's NDI, you can't have it. If Donald Trump is the president and he takes NDI

to his golf club in Bedminster, he's committed a crime. No one, no one under the law can possess NDI outside of a secure federal facility. Bedminster, Joe Biden's house in Rehoboth, Mar-a-Lago, these are not secure federal facilities. White House is, the Oval Office is, the West Wing is, the Pentagon is, Langley, where the CIA is headquartered is, FBI headquarters is. You get the point. Okay. So they are talking about this document that Trump sounds like he has in his hands.

The document is a plan to invade Iran, which Trump rejected, a plan that was prepared for him by the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don't know if he personally prepared it. Probably not. It was probably prepared by a consensus of uh military uh folks trump refers to it in this tape and says i still have this he doesn't say ndi i don't know that he's familiar with the term i still have this classified document back from when i was in the white house that's what he says on the tape. Now, saying that, of course, belies his argument that he classified everything. Saying it, of course, belies his argument that he didn't know he had this stuff. Saying it recognizes that he intentionally took this stuff with him. That's

one of the elements of the crime the government has to prove his intent. This is why Donald Trump, and he is my friend, can be his own worst enemy. A, by denying a crime before he's accused of it. B, by discussing the elements of the crime and relieving the government of the obligation to prove those elements. Okay, all of that is the background to a question that my friend and former Fox colleague, still friend, former colleague, not former friend, Sean Hannity, put to the president last night at a Fox town hall. You'll hear the question. You'll hear former President Trump's answer. News broke yesterday that there might be a tape recording where you acknowledged that you understood that these were classified documents. First of all, do you know who this call may be with?

Do you know anything about it? No, I don't know anything about it. All I know is this. Everything I did was right. We have the Presidential Records Act, which I abided by 100%. Okay, so they both were misspoken. It wasn't a call.

It wasn't a telephone call. It was a meeting around a table, which everyone there knew was being taped. And secondly, the Presidential Records Act has nothing, nothing to do with top secret documents and nothing to do with NDI. The Presidential Records Act talks about what becomes of presidential records when the president leaves office, what the president can keep, what goes to the National Archives, and how the president can have access to them when they're in the National Archives. None of this has to do with classified material, and absolutely none of it has to do with NDI, with National Defense Information. Okay, how CNN learned about the tape? I don't know. There must be someone in the FBI, no surprise, who is leaking this material to either CNN or the New

York Times. I mean, the prosecutor has a tape of the potential defendant admitting to part of the crime. How does the press learn about that? Ah, somebody in the FBI, somebody in the DOJ revealed it. And they actually played the tape because I heard a clip of the tape. Go to a website, I don't know where, Google it, and you'll hear a little bit of Trump's voice. You won't hear the whole tape. The tape is hours long. The only relevant part is about 25 or 30 seconds. I heard a clip of four or five seconds, which was clearly Trump's voice. Now the feds are saying, well, this document that he talked about that he said that he still has, where is it? That's a problem for Trump's lawyers because Trump's lawyers certified under oath that Donald Trump no longer had NDI or classified material or documents that he claimed he classified anywhere in his possession.

Now, all of a sudden, and this conversation took place in 2021, this conversation took place in July of 2021, almost two years ago. Now, all of a sudden, we find out about the existence of another document and nobody knows where it is. And the lawyers, of course, are shaking in their boots because they told a federal judge that they had scoured the premises and between what they found and what the FBI found, Donald Trump has no more documents, but nobody can find this document. It wasn't among the documents that the FBI seized, and it wasn't when they executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, and it wasn't among the documents that Trump's lawyers found. So nobody seems to know where it is. This is a problem for Trump's lawyers. On what basis would they say

there's no more documents? President told them so. Well, if the president misled them, as he probably did, that's an act of deception. What's the significance of that? Well, when the client deceives the lawyer, there's no attorney-client privilege, meaning Trump's lawyers can now be asked under oath before the grand jury, as many of them already have, involving other documents about this document. That is the worst thing that can happen to a client in a criminal investigation when his own lawyers have to testify against him. Why? Because he didn't follow their advice. Why? Because he talked about a criminal investigation of him thoughtlessly. Why? Because he didn't tell the truth to his lawyers. Why? Because of the crime fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.

You're the lawyer. Client walks into your office and says, I just robbed a bank. What are my defenses? Well, you can go over the defenses. It wasn't you. The money was yours. The banker said you could do it. They made a mistake. You actually filled out a withdrawal form. You were a thousand miles away and you have an alibi. Those are legitimate defenses. That conversation is privileged. Client comes into your office as the lawyer and says, I'm about to rob a bank. What would my defenses be? That conversation is not privileged because that is a conversation about committing a crime or perpetrating a fraud. A federal judge has already found that Donald Trump lied to his lawyers about other documents and caused those lawyers to lie to a federal judge about other

documents. That's the fraud that breaks the attorney-client privilege. That's the trouble. That's the depth of the trouble that Donald Trump is in today. OK, Georgia, he is being probed by the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which is Atlanta and its suburbs for attempting to undo the election in Georgia. I mean, there's a lot going on here. They've sent a target letter to Rudy Giuliani. Rudy was part of a group that persuaded Republican electors going to the electoral college to say, we were really chosen by the voters of Georgia and not the Democrats. Well, we know that Joe Biden won the election in Georgia. All the investigations demonstrated that there were some irregularities, but no fraud, nothing to change the outcome. So it was close. Biden won by 11,780 votes. The investigation here is, were Trump and Giuliani

involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the voters of Georgia of their votes. The DA says yes, and she says she can prove it. What is new there? What's new there is what she revealed yesterday. She is considering indicting Trump, Giuliani, and some of the electors, the so-called fake electors, the Republicans who signed documents saying we were truly elected by the voters. There are 16 of them, 12 of them have been given immunity. Immunity. That means you can't be prosecuted. Well, why would the government give you immunity?

Ah, because you're going to tell the government what it wants to know about the other four and about Giuliani and about Trump. Very, very bad for Giuliani and Trump. What came out yesterday? What came out yesterday is RICO, Racketeer Influence Corrupt Organization Act. This is a federal RICO. This is Georgia State RICO. If the prosecutor can show that two or more crimes were committed

anywhere on the planet, significance of what came out yesterday, and that the crimes were intended to benefit Trump, then Trump can be charged with those crimes. That's the Georgia RICO statute. What's unique about it is the crimes can be anywhere on the planet. They don't have to be in the state of Georgia. What does that mean? That means that whatever he did or didn't do on January 6th, whatever he did or didn't do with the Mar-a-Lago documents could very well fulfill the requirements for the Georgia RICO statute. Bottom line, Trump is in very serious jeopardy legally, not only with the feds at Mar-a-Lago, not only with the feds at January 6th, but with the state of Georgia. Okay, could Hunter Biden be the next poster child for the Second Amendment?

Things can't get any crazier than this. Among the charges against Hunter Biden, aside from income tax evasion and whatever the hell is on that crazy laptop of his that he gave to the blind guy to repair. They have the laptop. The blind guy testified. We don't know what he told the grand jury. We don't know if the IRS is seriously investigating him or if they're slow walking it or not but he is being investigated by the FBI for you ready for this being a drug user in possession of a weapon okay when he got his Delaware license to carry a handgun as you have to ask you always get asked this are you a habitual drug user he He said no, and they gave him the

license to own the handgun. Now it turns out that he has been a habitual drug user. So the feds may very well charge him with being a drug user in possession of a weapon, except for the most recent Supreme Court opinion on this, which says the law today, with respect to the Second Amendment, must be as it was at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. Well, when the Second Amendment was ratified, you got it. Taking drugs was not criminal. The Founding Fathers themselves smoked hemp, a precursor to marijuana.

The founding fathers who regularly carried and used weapons smoked hemp, a precursor to marijuana. So is the federal statute that makes it a crime for a habitual drug user to possess a weapon unconstitutional? And if it is, is Hunter Biden, of all creeps, a savior to that part of the Second Amendment? Can't make this up. Same day that this was announced, Hunter's father announced that the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, ranting and raving that military weapons of war have no place in America. And until we make these weapons illegal, we're not going to solve the problem with guns. You can't make this up. If her Secret Service detail had taken off their blazers and suit jackets, what would you see that they were carrying? Military weapons of war. Now, the Justice Scalia opinion, Heller versus the District of Columbia, we're back to 2005 now,

that says the right to keep and bear arms is a personal individual right. It doesn't belong to the government. It doesn't belong to the militia. It belongs to individuals. When asked what kind of weapons individuals can possess, answer, whatever the bad guys have and whatever the government has. So Vice President Harris, former Senator Harris, former California State Attorney General Harris, graduate of, I believe, Cal Berkeley Law School, a top 20 law school. You should know what the law is and how the Supreme Court has interpreted it. If your Secret Service crew can carry a collapsible monstrosity to protect you, then those of us who want to carry guns can carry the same thing. How could we possibly consent to give the government the power to do something that we don't have the power to do? If we don't

have the power to do it, we can't give that power to the government. But if we gave that power to do something that we don't have the power to do. If we don't have the power to do it, we can't give that power to the government. But if we gave that power to the government, that presumes that we have the power to do it. What is the right to keep and bear arms, my friends? It is a modern mechanical extension of your right to self-defense, your right to punch in the nose someone who's about to punch you in the nose, or your right to shoot someone who's about to shoot you or your family or a loved one or any innocent person. That's been the law of the land since 1776. That's the law of the land today. Of course, Vice President Harris and her crew don't understand it at all. Finally, I've been very upset, as you all know.

I just did an interesting clip with Congressman Andy Biggs, Republican, libertarian, conservative of Arizona, one of the few members of Congress who understands that the Constitution means what it says, part of the crew that fought valiantly, courageously against raising the debt ceiling. And of course, they lost. Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of OMB, Office of Management and Budget, and all those federal bureaucrats can now borrow all the money they want, driving inflation up, driving the price of everything up. A courageous group of Republican members of Congress called the Freedom Caucus opposed it. Congressman Biggs was a member of that group. There is another person who used to be a member of that group when he was a Florida congressman. He's now the governor of Florida. And I'm going to play for you in a minute what he said about this. And he's

true to his roots, that you can't solve a debt problem by borrowing more money. You can't borrow money to pay interest on the money you've already borrowed. If you were a customer of a bank, no bank would allow it. That's what the federal government does. I'm not taking sides between Donald Trump or Chris Christie, my friend for many years here in New Jersey, or Ron DeSantis. But here is Governor DeSantis on the insanity of raising the debt ceiling. This debt deal that they just taught that they're talking about, we were going bankrupt before that debt deal and we are still going bankrupt after that debt deal. They're giving Biden $4 trillion

in additional debt through the end of his presidency. They're also keeping these inflated levels of spending and even the 87,000 IRS agents, they're getting rid of like 2% of those, which is totally inadequate. In Florida, we run budget surpluses. Our debt is $17 billion, but our economy is $1.2 trillion. If you compare that to the federal government our national debt is much higher than our overall size of an american economy well said more as we get it have a nice weekend judge napolitano froggy voice for judging freedom