Judging Freedom - Wars & Government Lies_ Scott Horton

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 noon here on the East Coast of the United States. Scott Horton from antiwar.com joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Thank you very much. Sure. Since last we met, the big news, of course, has been the revelation of secret Pentagon and CIA briefing documents supposedly prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the staff of the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which made their way legally into the hands of a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman from Massachusetts who shared them with a bunch of his buddies. There's Jack Teixeira in a selfie, shared them with a bunch of his buddies in a chat room, one of whom let the cat out of the bag, eventually made its way to a former naval technician born in Russia, and she's the one that got it out to the world. evidence points to. But what I want to talk to you about is not

how a 21 year old gets a security clearance. I I think the the scrutiny for that should be so that you have to have more of a life experience before you reach that level but I want to talk big picture. Let's say that Tashara did everything the government says he did. Is he a criminal or is he a hero? Well, I think he's a hero. And, you know, it's funny because, Judge, they said at first, well, he was just trying to impress his friends and he has no belief system whatsoever, this kind of thing. But I saw one report, and I'm sorry, I don't remember if this

was originally in the Washington Post. I saw it repeated in the Hill. They said that he was an anti-war libertarian. I saw the same report and a traditionalist Roman Catholic. This guy is really, really ringing in my ears. But I have argued, and I want to hear your argument, that when the government takes us to war, when the government is killing people and lying about it, truth is a higher value than secrecy. Absolutely. And look, they lie to us about all of these wars because they have to, because they're all unjustified. This whole era is the era of the phony wars. Not one of them. We've had, what, seven, eight wars in the last 20 years. We didn't need to have any of them at all. They've had to essentially buffalo us into this. And so, you know,

this is why Daniel Ellsberg has been explicitly calling for government employees to leak. You know, we send these, speaking of, you know, 21-year-olds, we send these kids over there to get their legs blown off, patrolling posh tunes down in the Helmand province. For someone of a higher rank who has access to the truth that the American people need to know, for them to take the risk of going to prison is not too much to ask. We're talking about people's lives being extinguished here in mass violence. And so for people who have access to files like this that expressly contradict the narratives that we're being given by our government and major media about conflicts on this scale, absolutely they should leak. We have the right to know this information.

In fact, the first time you and I ever met, I was on your show on Fox Business defending Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for the leak back in 2010. And I heard about it from management because, of course, I was cheering you on and eliciting all that from you. Manning, of course, gave the information to Julian Assange, who published it. These were very serious and profound war crimes. We know what has happened to Assange. He's being slowly tortured to death in solitary confinement in Great Britain, awaiting extradition here. Manning, of course, pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 45 years in jail,

and then President Obama commuted the sentence. Manning is, of course, free as a bird to talk about all of this. Teixeira will probably be prosecuted. Look, I don't know, but I'm familiar with the debates about whether or not he is a pawn and a dupe of someone higher in the government who agrees with him, who agrees with you and me, and who wanted to expose this, but because of the rank of this person, and I don't have a particular person in mind didn't want to expose himself. Now Teixeira will probably be prosecuted and unless some big-hearted president pardons or commutes he'll be spending you know the bulk of his youth the next 20 or 25 years, he won't be a youth when he gets out, in jail. So which is

worse, a kid who tells everybody what they need to know about the government so we can decide whether or not to reelect it, or a government that lies to the Congress under oath and to the American people? Before you answer, I'm going to play two clips for you. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Victoria Noland suggesting the U.S. should invade Crimea. But listen to the intel she spills when she says that. There is a drone base in Crimea where the drones that the Iranians have given Russia are being launched from. There are command and control sites in Crimea that are essential for Russia's hold on all of the territory, including the land bridge. There are mass military

installations on Crimea that Russia has turned into essential logistics and back office depots for this war. Those are legitimate targets. Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that. All secret intel that she, as the Undersecretaryary of state which she doesn't have the authority to do legally decided to reveal so the government selectively reveals what it wants and selectively prosecutes revealers it hates and fears and those whom embarrass it that's such a great point judge of course in the washington post the wall street, the New York Times, they thrive off of leaked government secrets all day, every day. And just exactly as you say, when it's there to bolster the government narrative, no problem at all. CIA hands above top secret data right to Charlie Savage.

He does his stenographer role of repeating exactly what they want him to say, regardless of whether he knows it's a lie or not, like the Russia bounties hoax in Afghanistan in 2020, which he knew was a lie and printed anyway. No problem there, but someone exposes the truth. And we've seen, and for people who are not familiar with this topic, I know you're a great expert on it, but for the last 20 years, Bush and especially Obama have prosecuted what, two dozen or something of these whistleblowers and mercilessly so. Obama, there's, you know, this is easily verified. Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president from Woodrow Wilson up to him combined. Correct. And so they're, you know,

ruthlessly cracking down on leakers. And they're terrified. And this is why they persecute Julian Assange as badly as they do, as lawlessly as they do, is intimidation. It's to send a message to others. And by the way, this is really important too, that people keep in mind, Julian Assange never leaked anything. He was only the leakey. And yet the Assange precedent judge is already being set here. I read in one of these Washington Post stories about the current leak that when this guy put the documents in his discord, the Washington Post writer wrote, he was putting all of his friends in legal jeopardy by exposing them to this classified information. That is hogwash.

Yeah, that's completely crazy. There is no legal jeopardy whatsoever in reading it. There's no legal jeopardy whatsoever in disseminating it unless you are the thief. There's obviously legal jeopardy to share. I've argued if I were free to do so, I wouldn't prosecute him, and I'd pardon all those who are in jeopardy over the Espionage Act, which in my opinion is unconstitutional. But those who receive this are in no legal jeopardy over the Espionage Act, which in my opinion is unconstitutional. But those who receive this are in no legal jeopardy whatsoever, particularly in the case of Julian Assange. He's the publisher. He's not the thief. The thief has already been convicted

and in a rare move by a president notorious for prosecuting people, sentenced commuted, Barack Obama. But Assange is just the receiver of this information. Let's go back a few steps. The essence of what Tashira revealed is the certain, or I should say informed belief on the part of senior American officials, that the war is going badly for Ukraine, that far more Ukrainians are being killed per population of Ukraine than Russians are being killed, that the Ukrainian air defense systems are so degraded they will be useless by the end of the month of May. That is a fair assessment of the conclusions in these documents. Watch the testimony now of the Secretary of Defense was familiar with these documents

at the time he said under oath the following. Gary. Secretary Austin, Gary. Yeah, maybe we lost the call. All right, I guess we're having uh trouble getting secretary austin or if he pops up he pops up but you'll see him say under oath in a q a with senator roger wicker of the senate armed services uh committee uh expect ukraine to be doing quite well once the weather dries once the earth dries uh this spring, and expect some significant Ukraine victories next winter. This is a bald-faced, under oath, to the Congress lie. Yep. And they've been lying to all of us this whole time too, saying that the Russians are

completely getting licked. They repeat Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties as though they're the gospel truth. Hell, Yahoo News outright reprints articles from Ukrainian Pravda. Just like they're reprinting something from the Associated Press. And according to them, 200,000 Russians have been killed

and all of this stuff. Their total humiliating defeat is imminent and it's just like afghanistan it's just like iraq it's just like vietnam it's just like the rest they lie about everything all the time they have to so so here here's my point let me ask gary do we have the uh a clip of secretary austin gary Austin, Gary? Okay, I guess we don't. We've played it before, but I wanted to see your reaction to it, Scott. But here's my point. We have the number three person in the Department of State revealing state secrets. Obviously, she's not going to be prosecuted. We have Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, now about to be indicted for espionage,

revealing truthful statements about the military. We have his boss, the secretary of state, lying under oath. So the government can selectively reveal and selectively prosecute. The government can prosecute for telling the truth and not prosecute for sure. And it's pretty hard to believe that there's such a thing as a rule of law at all. You know, I remember Will Gregg and I were joking one time on the show about there was a Tom Clancy book and they made a movie out of it in the 1990s. I think it was the one where the president's doing a secret drug war and Harrison Ford, you know, shouts him down or whatever. Anyway, the movie ends with Harrison Ford, the hero CIA officer has a grip of documents and he's walking up Capitol Hill. And then the movie ends because we all know what happens then. Accountability, right? People get in trouble and heads roll and people get fired and people go to jail because Harrison Ford is going to prove there's a crime. They don't even need to show it. We all know what that means as he's walking up Capitol Hill. But who believes in that anymore? There's no accountability for government employees whatsoever, especially on the national level

in this country. We just saw, and I'm not ever getting over this like Waco. I'm not getting over this like Waco. I'm not getting over this. The CIA and the FBI, our secret police, framed the president of the United States for treason with Russia for a secret conspiracy to cheat and overthrow the election in 2016. And it was all a lie, 100 it every bit of it and yet they went for it and there was no reason that they saw in the world judge to not go through with framing the elected president united states and i'm not a trump partisan i never have been but i am a partisan against the secret police framing elected presidents i would have defended bernie Sanders under this. And by the way, if Sanders had won the nomination, that's exactly what Hillary would have done. She would have said

that the Russians had put Trump and Sanders up there. You saw that they tried that in 2020 with Sanders. And I would have defended him just the same. So the last person to be prosecuted for lying to Congress? Roger Clemens, the Yankee pitcher, who was charged with lying about the contents of his urine. First trial, hung jury. Second trial, not guilty. The government does not prosecute its own when the lies told under oath save face for the government. The government doesn't care. Remember Jim Clapper at the time, the director of national intelligence, Senator Wyden,

is the government spying on tens or hundreds of millions of Americans? No, not wittingly. A bald-faced lie. Wyden knew it because he had said the opposite in secret. Wyden respecting that what he learned in secret, he's not supposed to say in public, though the speech and debate clause in the Constitution would have protected him, was Clapper prosecuted. Of course, not even the Trump people who could have prosecuted Clapper, the statute of limitations has since run even the trump doj decided not to prosecute him because the government protects its own when lies save it from embarrassment yep and by the way clapper had lied that yes we can verify iraq has weapons of mass destruction all over the place wherever there's a roof i guarantee you there's a chemical weapons factory under there he said when he was the commander of the it's not the national reconnaissance office i'm sorry i always forget the

title of it but it's the satellite surveillance office that he was in charge of and then he lied that oh i love this the israeli originated tall tale that putin came and moved all of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction to Syria. So we got to invade Syria next, Ariel. You can't even say this with a straight face. One of the perpetrators of the Saddam has weapons of mass destruction at the time. So now we're back in an area of his history, you know well, because you've written and spoken about it so brilliantly, the presidency of George W. Bush, one of the perpetrators of the Bush line, notwithstanding Phil Giraldi, the CIA agent charged with telling Bush Saddam doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Bush threw him out of the Oval Office and went out and announced to the government that

he did have weapons of mass destruction, and another story for another time. But one of the perpetrators of this fraud was the chair, the then chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and his chief of staff. Today, that chief of staff is the secretary of state. And today the chair of that committee is the president of the United States. Yep. People don't get punished for lying when the lying saves face for the government. On the contrary, they get rewarded. The guy's the president of the United States right now. In fact, you know, he held two days of hearings in the summer of 2002, Joe Biden did, where only hawks were allowed to testify and anyone who could contradict them were forbidden.

Raimondo wrote an article, Justin Raimondo wrote an article at antiwar.com at the time called The Fix is In. And here's, you know, by the way, because people might not remember, but in 2001, after Bush took power, there was one of these rhinos from the Northeast, a guy named Jeffers, switched parties from Republican to Democrat and gave the Democrats the majority. In other words, the opposition party had the majority in the upper house of Congress. And what did they do? They helped lie us into war too. And Joe Biden with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton did everything they could to whip the rest of the Democrats to Congress. There are some courageous progressives, wrong hand. There are some courageous progressives on the left, and there are a few courageous libertarians

on the right. But for the most part, it's the spend money we don't have, kill because it makes us look stronger, regulate because nobody cares about the Constitution, call it whatever you want, big government, war party, doesn't matter whether you have an R or a D after your name. regulate because nobody cares about the constitution. Call it whatever you want, big government, war party, doesn't matter whether you have an R or a D after you. By the way, Judge, too, it's such an important point what you're saying here about the contradiction where their law applies to us in the severest ways, but it doesn't apply to them for whatever they do. Well, it's the same with the world empire too. And the rest of the world feels the same way about the situation as we do when we watch a's the same with the world empire too. And the rest of the world feels the same way about the situation as we do. When we watch a cop get away with murder, we watch a politician get

away with lying us into war. And they say, you know, the Americans have this public relations line that the whole, you know, American world empire is actually just the liberal rules-based world order that america enforces the world law selflessly in order to create this you know fair and balanced um type of a free trade zone for the world and further you know integration of uh of nations as in uh commercial relationships and all this stuff, and that it would all fall apart if we didn't. And that none of this is about us. This is only about helping everyone else. And yet everyone can see that America breaks the law whenever they want. If they can't get a UN resolution to bomb Serbia and break off Kosovo, they'll just do it anyway. And if they can't get a UN resolution to invade Iraq, they'll just do it anyway. And if they go on resolution to invade

Iraq, they'll just do it anyway. And if they feel like torturing people to death, they'll just do that too. And they'll just break any law and tell any lie and the whole world can see it. And so you are so intellectually honest, so courageous and so valuable to this show. Deeply grateful every time you come on for the very direct, intellectually sound ways in which you articulate the excesses of the government and its violation of human rights and basic principles of natural law. Thank you so much, my friend. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Judge. Appreciate that.

If you like all of this, like and subscribe. of natural law. Thank you so much, my friend. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Judge. Appreciate that. If you like all of this, like and subscribe. Matt Van Dyke, live from Ukraine in five minutes. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.