Judging Freedom - US Journalist Held in Russia_ Chinese _secret police station_ in NYC

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 18th, 2023. It's about five minutes after two in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Earlier today in Moscow, Evan Gershkovitz, that's the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested for espionage, way east in Russia over towards China, appeared in a Russian court. Now, the purpose of the appearance today was to appeal his denial of bail. It's no surprise that the Russian court wouldn't give him bail. An American court wouldn't give bail to a Russian journalist who had been arrested for espionage. But the initial court, there you can see him talking to his Russian lawyer in the holding pen in the courtroom. That's Evan right there. I don't know the name of the lawyer. So his original appeal in another court, his original appearance in another court east of Moscow in Ekaterinburg, where he was

arrested, that judge, a lower court judge, said no bail. Then the authorities moved him to Moscow where they try these crimes, and he appealed that decision. In the interim, his lawyers had offered an appeal of 50 million rubles, which is about $600,000 in cash to be posted in the government's Moscow bank account. The prosecutors rejected that and the court rejected it as well. Again, I don't think it's a surprise that they're not going to give him bail. I don't see any way of him getting out of jail other than a prisoner swap. The Russians claim that he was engaged in examining military documents in wartime. I would think that the American FBI and DOJ would treat a Russian journalist the same way. You have American military documents and we're fighting a war. Russians admit they're fighting a war. The U.S. doesn't admit it, but of course we're fighting in that war as well.

I have friends in the intelligence community who believe that from the perspective of Russian intelligence, the case against Gershovitz is a valid one. I also have a lot of friends that know him who believe that there's absolutely no way that he was spying for the government. This is a dogged, professional, investigative reporter who may very well have had public sourced Russian military documents in his hands. I have other friends who say he was set up. The Russian intelligence agencies communicated to him through intermediaries and set him up, offered him secret documents that he ought to have known were protected by Russian law. So I don't know.

But what I do know is don't expect a fair trial and don't expect to see him freed by a court unless there's a prisoner swap at the highest level. The American government has gotten involved at the highest level, which it did not do for Brittany Griner, the female basketball player who was arrested at the Moscow airport because she had traces of marijuana oil, cannabis oil in one of her personal toiletry bags. The government didn't get involved at the highest level until Brittany Briner's fans, fan base in the United States, put pressure on them. But the pressure on the Russian government over Evan Gershkovich was immediate and incessant. So either the government wants to protect a journalist or he really was a spy and they want to get him out of there. I don't know which is the case.

I will give the benefit of the doubt to his friends who are also my friends, the mutual friends we have who tell me he's not a spy. I don't know who the Russians will trade. I do know that two weeks before he was arrested, he published the story in the Wall Street Journal, or the Wall Street Journal published the story over his byline, his name, saying that the American sanctions on Russia were starting to bite, starting to hurt, that the economy was starting to falter, and the average Russian folks were suffering because of the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on Russian businesses, industries, and banks. A week after that, a Brazilian soccer player was arrested in the United States, or at least a person who held himself out as a Brazilian soccer

player. The Russians claimed that this person who spoke perfect Portuguese and English with a Portuguese accent was really a Russian KGB agent, pretty creative disguise. One of these dark-skinned young men with blonde hair, So he looked like he could very well have been a Brazilian soccer player. Nevertheless, those two events, Gershkovitz's article in the Wall Street Journal predicting gloom and doom for the Russian economy and the arrest of this person that the FBI says is really an FSB, that's the successor to the KGB, an FSB agent that masquerading as a Brazilian soccer player. These two things happen. Maybe it'll be an even switch for both.

I don't like the idea of any American in a Russian prison, but I understand the way the world works, particularly when a country is at war. Okay, two tragic cases back to back within two days of each other, people showing up at the wrong house innocently being shot. In the case of Kansas City, Missouri, being killed, a young man by the name of Ralph Yarrow, young African-American teenager. That's Ralph on your right. On the left is a character by the name of Andrew Lester, who's been indicted for the aggravated assault of Ralph Yarrow. So Andrew Lester, the 84-year-old, is a homeowner. Ralph is driving a car thinking he's going to pick up his two younger brothers. He's given an address that is confusingly similar, 115 Terrace versus 115 Eastern Roadway. He went to the wrong 115. He knocked on the door of the house. There's a little sign there that says no solicitors. You see the sign. And the old man came out and shot him, shot him in the head. And then Ralph fell to the ground and the old man shot him again in the arm. Then it's not clear who called the police, but the police came. It appears that Ralph,

who's in critical condition in the hospital, will live, but the old man is being charged for aggravated assault using a handgun. That's 20 years in jail. The old man is 84 years old. Today, and no words were exchanged. The boy didn't even have a chance to say, I'm here to pick up my brothers. Or maybe when he saw the old man, he would have realized he was in the wrong house. They didn't exchange any words. The old man came to the front door with a gun and fired away. The castle doctrine, of course, does not permit the slaughter of those who pose no serious threat. The boy didn't have a weapon. He didn't have anything in his hands that appeared to be a weapon. The charge to me appears to be proper, and the prosecution appears to be

appropriate, and I'm sure will be vigorous. In another case in upstate New York, a young woman named Kaylin Gillis pulled into the driveway of the wrong house. There's the house that Kaylin pulled into. The fellow's name is Kevin Monaghan, who owns the house. He has a sign saying private property. This is way out of the sticks. Hunting, fishing, trapping, or trespassing for any purpose is strictly forbidden. Violators will be prosecuted. You see the name Monaghan. Kevin Monaghan came out with a gun and blew her away, killed her right on the spot.

He, of course, is being charged for second-degree murder. First-degree murder is planned, plotted murder, where you target the victim and you, quote, lie in wait, was the old phrase, meaning you planned and plotted until the appropriate time you killed the person. That is death penalty murder in both states. There's no death penalty in New York. Second-degree murder is one step short of that. Second-degree murder is a knowing and intentional killing, but without the planned or plotting, something happened that triggered the killing. It's almost inconceivable to me that Mr. Monaghan has a defense to this. Again, no words were exchanged, and the young woman did not have a weapon in her hands.

She's driving a car. She pulled into his driveway to turn around, and he blew her away. She's dead, obviously, hence the second-degree murder charge. Now, you all know me. I am as fierce a defender of the Second Amendment as there is. I believe you have a natural human right to keep and bear arms. I believe you shouldn't even have to register your gun with the government any more than you have to register your desktop or your iPhone with the government, although as we know, the government knows it because the government

hacks into them. But that, of course, does not give you the right to shoot at people or kill people who pose no harm. If either of these people had approached these homes with a gun in their hands, that would have justified the homeowner using the gun. That's the castle doctrine. There's no duty to retreat. It's your own house. Where I live in New Jersey, if somebody approached my house with a gun, I have a duty to retreat, a duty to run into the house. I can't use a gun lawfully on that person, but that's not, and that's also the law in New York, the duty to retreat. There is no duty to retreat in Missouri. But the Castle Doctrine only comes into play when the person posing the threat, so to speak, has a gun. Neither Caitlin nor Ralph had guns. So there's no Castle Doctrine defense in either of these cases. It would be hard to imagine

even the defense of self-defense. I don't know what these defenses would be. Maybe temporary insanity, maybe some bizarre fear that the defendants and their lawyers and their psychiatrists will have to articulate for a jury. It's very sad, very tragic. The gun control crowd will use these as examples to want to ratchet up taking our guns away from us. These are apparently lawfully owned guns by people who have no criminal record, but obviously who behave criminally on the spot. In the case of the old man, Lester, and the young boy, Ralph Yarl, I don't know if there's a racial animus there. The old man is white. The young boy is African-American. In the case of Caitlin Gillis and Kevin Monaghan, I don't know what the motivation would be. He's probably going to say he was terrified to death. I don't know how you can be terrified because somebody turns their car around in your driveway. Maybe there's more to these cases than we know, but they are tragedies in which in the

Kansas City case, an innocent boy has been severely injured, and in the upstate New York case, an innocent young woman is dead. While all this was going on, the FBI arrested two American citizens of dual citizenry, China and the United States. I didn't know you could have dual citizenry, China and the United States. I guess I should have realized that, but you can. And these two guys, apparently with others, set up what appears to the naked eye to be a police station in Chinatown in New York, and they were arresting Chinese dissidents, that is, citizens of China living in New York, either on some sort of a visa, dragging them in and browbeating them. And these people thought they were legitimately being arrested either by the Chinese government in America, in which case the arrest is illegitimate, or they just thought they

were being given a talking to. But whatever this is, somebody in the United States masquerading as a Chinese police officer for the government of China, purporting to exercise legitimate powers of a police officer, arresting powers in the United States of America and arresting people because of their speech, which of course is absolutely protected in the United States of America. Even the speech of foreigners is protected. The First Amendment makes no distinction between Americans and non-Americans. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. That's the language in the First Amendment. Today, Congress means all governments. So today, it effectively reads no government shall make any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the

press. So the dissidents can say whatever they want. It may be against law in China, but they can't be arrested or prosecuted for it here in the United States, nor can you claim to be a cop for a foreign country in the United States. You can work for a foreign country in the U.S., but you have to register with the federal government. The government prosecutes people very seriously who fail to register with the federal government. The government prosecutes people very seriously who fail to register because the federal government has the right to know who are foreign agents here purporting to exercise the authority of a foreign government in the U.S. I got to tell you, I'd heard about this, but I didn't think that it actually existed. I thought it was just a myth, but apparently it does exist. Chinese police agents setting up makeshift police stations and makeshift jails in the United States, arresting citizens of China and browbeating them to return to China where they're prosecuted for their speech, which is critical of the government. This is horrific. And though I have been a harsh critic

of the FBI and of the DOJ, I commend them for finding this out and prosecuting these people. I don't know where this ends. They've only arrested two people. They claim there were 34 others involved. I don't know if there's 34 in the U.S. and they're looking for them or if these are collaborators in China. Forget about getting them here. The claim as well is that there are many other major cities in the U.S. where this happens and it's probably major cities where there are communities of Chinese Americans which would welcome Chinese dissidents. That's where these agents of the Chinese government are more likely than not to set up these

makeshift police stations and makeshift jails because that's where they're going to find the Chinese dissidents. Imagine how thin skinned. Just think about how thin skinned the Chinese government is that Imagine how thin-skinned, just think about how thin-skinned the Chinese government is that would go to this extraordinary expense to punish people, to browbeat people, to kidnap them. It's not a lawful arrest in the U.S., it's a kidnapping because of their speech and because of their speech alone. I'm harshly critical of the government. You all know that. But thank God we still have the freedom of speech. Again, I don't know where this one is going to end up. If there are others involved, the FBI is going to have to try and find the others. They

may horse trade with these two characters that they arrested yesterday. They may offer them deals in return for getting information from them. On the other hand, they may end up like Evan Gershkovich, swapped, traded for some Americans who are being kept in Chinese jails. I don't know, are there Americans in Chinese jails for whom there will be a prisoner swap. I'm not making this up. I honestly don't know if there are. So this will probably go beyond the NYPD, the New York Police Department, beyond the FBI, beyond the Department of Justice to the Department of State and maybe even to the White House to see what prisoners are worth swapping. Sometimes these stories are not happy ones, but I want you to know that we cover them for you, and you will always get them here,

as well as my editorial comments, which will always be on the side of personal liberty in our once free society. More as we get it, Colonel McGregor later this week. Scott Ritter later this week. We are all over the Jack Teixeira release of documents case. My column coming out tomorrow night, working title. I have to say working title because websites and newspapers have the ability to change the name of it. I think I come up with sexy names, but the publishers don't always agree with me. Working title is Secrecy Versus Truth. And you know I'm on the side of the truth. Morris, we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.