Judging Freedom - Weaponization of Gov_ Expel Adam Schiff__ SCOTUS & Big Tech

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 18th, 2023. It's about 3.40 or 3.20, excuse me, in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today. Some of them very, excuse me, in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today, some of them very, very recent, including a decision by the Supreme Court on whether or not Google and Facebook can be held liable for the information that is posted on their bulletin boards, particularly if that information results in an act of terror that produces death. But first, the House Select Subcommittee investigating the weaponization of the federal government had a very, very interesting hearing today in which an FBI whistleblower,

we're going to show you his picture in a minute, he doesn't look like an FBI agent because he has hair down to his shoulders and he has a beard. He's either been in hiding or has been undercover or doesn't care what he looks like since the FBI is not interested in his services anymore. Nevertheless, this is a whistleblower who came to the federal government, who came to Congress, excuse me, and said the FBI is asking me to do things that is not consistent with the law. So here is Congressman Matt Gaetz interrogating this whistleblower. A little bit of ruffles and flourishes from Congressman Gaetz, but he's right on the mark, and he understands that the

Constitution means what it says. Take a listen. The Washington field office, did they ever try to get you to do something that was outside the normal order of law enforcement activity? Yes, sir. And what did the Washington field office try to get you to do that violated the law and regulations? They tried to get me to serve a federal grand jury subpoena when there was no proper predicate to do so. And the reason there was no predicate was because it was based on an anonymous tip, right? That's correct. And time and again, the Washington field office was trying to pressure you without corroboration to go start process on people. Isn't that right? Yes, sir. And so while I agree that January 6th was a violent day, a bad day, a day that nobody wants to relive, violence on January 6th doesn't justify weaponizing the government against people who were innocent and did nothing wrong.

Thank you for blowing the whistle on that. Well, Congressman Gates is right. So this FBI agent or former FBI agent was asked to serve a grand jury on someone for which there was no basis. There was no factual basis for the grand jury. We don't know for the grand jury on someone for which there was no basis. There was no factual basis for the grand jury. We don't know for the grand jury subpoena. We don't know if the subpoena was actually voted by a grand jury. Remember, the grand jury is 23 citizens. There's no judge there. There's a judge who supervises the grand jury if there are issues, but there's no judge in the courtroom. What the grand jury does is secret. So this is the grand jury that indicted hundreds of people for the January 6th insurrection,

as the government calls it, a violent political protest, as others call it. Whatever you believe, whether you think the government concocted the whole thing, whether you think everybody was innocent, whether you think there were bad people there, people died, tremendous damage was done. The government's legitimate constitutional functions were disrupted for a while. Some people have been prosecuted. I think a lot of people have been way over prosecuted. Some people have been prosecuted for sedition you've heard me rant on that sedition is a conspiracy to overthrow the government by force how could five people as were prosecuted twice five different people twice possibly overthrow the government of the united states by force how can you be prosecuted for a conspiracy that's impossible to perform. Remember the old one-liner from Clarence Darrow,

the great trial lawyer. Now this was stated before the Civil War, so the value of money was different then than it is today. If a boy steals a dime, he's not going to go to prison, a small fine will do. But if two boys conspire to steal a dime and then don't do it, they're going to go to jail because of the conspiracy. Well, he is largely correct. The government prosecutes people for thought crimes, which is essentially what many of the January 6th prosecutions were. And unfortunately, the government has prevailed in all of those. It either intimidated and scared the daylights out of people so they pleaded guilty or persuaded juries that these people, because of their thoughts, were somehow monsters. We don't know on whom this FBI agent, former FBI agent, then FBI agent, was asked to serve a subpoena. We don't know what

the basis for the subpoena was. We do know, in his opinion, there was no basis for it. That must mean either there was an insufficient factual basis to bring this person in on whom the subpoena was served to testify before the grand jury, or there was no actual subpoena voted by the grand jury and the FBI concocted it. All those things do happen. What we do know is that we have an honest, decent, now former FBI agent willing to spill the beans on his former bosses. You all know that the Durham report came out two days ago, and many of you are probably familiar with my opinion of it. I think it was a whitewash. I think all he did was praise himself for the people that he indicted. He indicted two people for lying to the FBI. How can it be a crime to lie to the FBI when the FBI is allowed legally to lie to us?

Are they of a different caliber of morality than we are? Of course not. It's the government writing laws to favor itself. When that argument that I just made was made to two juries, two different cases, each a defendant you and I had never heard of before all of this, each charged with lying to the FBI. The jury agreed with that argument and found those defendants not guilty. That is what John Durham has to his credit, if you consider that credit. I don't. He also charged a right out of law school, young lawyer, deputy assistant general counsel to the FBI for altering a document before it went to a judge. Did he charge the senior FBI people who

asked him to do it? Of course not. And what happened to that young man? Six months in probation. So the problem with John Durham is that no one will suffer any consequences for what happened. No one will be answerable. Every FBI agent would be nothing without the DOJ. I'll repeat that. FBI agents are nothing without the DOJ. Every FBI agent works for a federal prosecutor. Every federal prosecutor works for the DOJ. They can't start an investigation. They can't get an arrest warrant. They can't get a search warrant. They can't get a grand jury subpoena without the DOJ involved. Do you think that John Durham was going to criticize the DOJ? Of course not. John Durham was appointed by President Bill Barr to whitewash the DOJ. Who were the attorneys general when all this happened? Loretta Lynch, when the whole thing was concocted

in the Oval Office with President Obama, Vice President Biden, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then Director of the FBI Jack Brennan. Loretta Lynch was the head of the DOJ at the time. Then Jeff Sessions was the head of the DOJ. Then he took a step back and Rod Rosenstein was the head of this part of the DOJ. And then Bill Barr himself. Bill Barr, isn't he the one who appointed John Durham? Sure, he's the one who appointed John Durham to make sure no fingers were pointed at him and his former colleagues. The government always takes care of itself. But John Durham did say there was no basis for the Trump investigations, that it was all political shenanigans. And of course, John Durham contradicted Congressman Adam Schiff, who led the Democrats' charge. I got to tell you, I actually like Adam Schiff, and we agree

on a number of things. A liberal Democrat, I'm a libertarian, so we're not going to agree on much, but certain things we do agree on. civil liberties and war we agree on. Nevertheless, some members of Congress now, a congresswoman in particular, has filed a resolution to expel Congressman Schiff from the Congress because she says he repeated lies about President Trump. OK, congresswoman, you can't do it. Why? Because the speech and debate clause protects what Adam Schiff says in his official capacity on the floor of the House, on the way to the floor of the House, on a House committee meeting, on the way to the House committee meeting, and the First Amendment protects what he says elsewhere. This is nonsense that the Republicans would want to throw him out of Congress, just like it's nonsense for the Democrats to want to throw George Santos out.

George Santos obviously has a problem distinguishing between reality and fantasy. He's the congressman from Long Island who apparently lied a tremendous number of lies about his personal background. He's been indicted for financial shenanigans before he became a member of Congress. The Democrats want to kick him out. Why do they want to kick him out so that Kevin McCarthy will have a three vote majority, not a four vote majority? Guess what? He's innocent until proven guilty. There is no basis to kick Adam Schiff out.

There's no basis to kick George Santos out. And the sooner members of Congress recognize this, the better. The same laws that protect Congressman Schiff and Congressman Santos protect all 533 House and Senate remaining members of Congress. And you can't cut those laws down because you hate Schiff or you hate Santos. Get over it. A TikTok ban was just signed in Montana. This is absurd. The state of Montana thinks it can stop you from using TikTok. I don't know how they can possibly enforce that law, but there's a couple of very, very serious problems

with it. First of all, TikTok is commerce. It is interstate commerce. It is the movement of information and goods from wherever the TikTok server is outside of Montana to inside of Montana. Can the state of Montana interfere with interstate commerce? It cannot. Why? Because the Constitution says only Congress can regulate interstate commerce. That's strike one. Strike two, it's freedom of speech. Your freedom of speech comes from your humanity. It doesn't come from the state of Montana or New Jersey or California. In fact, the First Amendment, which reads, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or California. In fact, the First Amendment, which reads, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press today means no government shall make any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Greg

Gianforte, the governor of Montana, a former member of Congress and a person I have met a couple of times, Greg, Governor, you should know this. Now, I know sometimes you politicians do things just to please the base. I understand that, even when you know it's unconstitutional. But this is so unconstitutional that the first complaint filed before a federal judge in Montana will result in enjoining the state of Montana from enforcing this ridiculous law. You don't want children to look at TikTok. It's the job of the parents to stop them. You don't want adults to look at TikTok. Too bad. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of speech, out of the business of what people say and what they hear. It's the choice

for competent adults. And for children, it's the decision of their parents. It's not the decision of the state. So this thing we know is going to go nowhere, and rightly so. Tomorrow, Friday, is a hearing in Federal District Court in Boston for Jack Teixeira. We've all been waiting for this hearing. This is an effort by young Jack Teixeira's lawyers to get him out of jail during the pendency of his trial. The government is painting him to be a monster. The government is painting him to be a dangerous terrorist with an arsenal of weapons. What we already know from Larry Johnson, who appears on this show weekly and sometimes twice a week when we can get him, that the weapons that Jack Teixeira had were toys. They looked like real weapons, but they were toys. They were glorified paintball guns,

glorified water pistols. Yeah, they looked like real weapons, but they weren't. The FBI should have known that before they sent 25 FBI agents, half armed to the teeth like they were about to go in combat, half dressed the way FBI agents normally dress to arrest this kid. So his hearing is tomorrow. The government is going to put experts on the stand to say, no, these weren't toys. These were real guns. The guy is dangerous. But the latest thing they have against him is he was caught twice taking notes on classified documents and putting the notes in his pocket. Isn't that enough for the feds to have taken away his security clearance? If you don't trust the guy with the security clearance,

why do you let him keep the security clearance? Why? Because this was, as Larry Johnson has argued, a controlled leak. And it continues to be a controlled leak, and it continues to be a controlled leak. We continue to see documents suddenly materialize out of nowhere, identified by the CIA's favorite recipient of leaks known as the Washington Post. Somebody north of Jack Teixeira knew that he was a gullible young man who was sharing top secret information with his buddies in his chat room. He doesn't work for a foreign government. He didn't wish anybody harm. He wasn't even ideological like Edward Snowden or Bradley slash Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange or Daniel Ellsberg. These people believed that the government was

killing people and getting away with it. And it was about time the American government, the American public knew about it. If that had been to share his motivation, I would stand up and applaud for him. I don't know what his motivation was. It may have been just to impress his friends. And what did that do? Embarrass the hell out of the Biden administration. What do we now know? We now know that the senior military leadership in the Defense Department believes that Ukraine will lose the war and is lying about it when they speak to Congress. We now know that the senior military leadership in the Defense Department that believes that in two weeks, on June 1st, the ability of Ukraine to defend itself against

Russian air power will be degraded down to zero. Has Joe Biden told you that? Has the Secretary of State told you that? Has the Secretary of Defense told you that? No. What do they do? Continue to spend American dollars in a futile effort to kill Russian boys. Continue to have American boys killing Russian boys. Yes, there are American soldiers there. We all know that by now. How do we know it? Because Jack Teixeira released these documents to his friends in a chat room, and somebody either hacked into the chat room or released what was going on in the chat room. Jack Tashara, though he is a young kid who wanted to boast to his buddies, has turned out to be an American hero. Your Honor, let him out of jail. He's no more dangerous than anybody else is.

You can put some restrictions on him because he has been charged with a very serious crime, but he's not a danger to the United States of America. The government's going to give you a bunch of hooey tomorrow. And finally, today, the Supreme Court of the United States came down with two unanimous decisions, important decisions to everybody listening to me now. And it's shocking that it should be unanimous. Two people were murdered in terrorist activities, slaughtered by these monsters who think that they can kill innocents because they don't like the foreign policy of the

United States. Foreign policy of the United States stinks, but the remedy, of course, is to vote these creeps out of office. Nevertheless, there are monsters out there who have killed Americans. We all know that. The families of two Americans sued Google and Facebook, and they sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to aid and abet. They basically mean the same thing, aid and abet. A terrorist act. What did Google and Facebook do? from their bulletin board these rantings and ravings of Middle Eastern madmen who encouraged others to kill innocent Americans in order to teach George W. Bush, whose legacy is buried in the ashes of history already, that he was wrong to have invaded Afghanistan and wrong to have

invaded Iraq. Okay, I get their anger. It was wrong for George W. Bush to have done that, but killing innocent Americans is not going to stop it, and in no way is justified morally or legally. Ah, so the family comes along and sues Facebook and sues Google. You helped these monsters because you didn't patrol or cleanse your own postings and you didn't take it down. Supreme Court unanimously said, no, it's horrible speech. It's hate speech, but it's protected speech. That's not the Supreme Court. That's the Congress of the United States. They didn't have anything to do with aiding or abetting acts of terrorism. Thank God for this decision today. Thank God that it was unanimous,

Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion, all nine of the justices agreeing. Thank God that again, it stands for the government shall keep its nose out of the freedom of speech. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to let you decide what to say, what to speak, what to write, and what to listen to, and the government shall have nothing to do with it. Supreme Court of the United States of America, nine to zero. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.