Judging Freedom - Whistleblower on AG Garland_ Ex CIA director & Hunter Biden_ SCOTUS news

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, April 21st, 2023. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics. And they're fascinating, and they're sort of tying a bow on this long, complex week of ours. I had reported to you from right here yesterday that there was still a charge outstanding against Alec Baldwin, that the more serious charge of using a gun to commit a crime, which is a minimum of five years in jail in New Mexico, had been dropped, but that the reckless manslaughter charge had not been dropped. It turns out that I was wrong.

I was relying on other reports, which also were wrong, and I should have done my homework, and I didn't. So I will correct that, and that is that all charges have been dismissed against Alec Baldwin. Now, this is a very, very interesting case. The case is on its second set of prosecutors. The first team of prosecutors were forced off the case because the chief prosecutor was running for the New Mexico state Senate. And New Mexico has a clause in its state constitution that prohibits a human being from being in two branches of government at the same time, the executive branch where prosecutors are and the legislative branch to which she was elected. So she had to leave. Her assistant prosecutors left with her. Another team came in.

The other team came in. They got the indictment from a grand jury, and then they're ready to defend the indictment by revealing the evidence they have. And it turns out, you ready for this? What Alec Baldwin said was true. The gun did go off without him pulling a trigger. It seems inconceivable, but the gun was doctored intentionally, not unlawfully, in order to make it easier to use on a movie set, in order to use it with blanks, with dummy bullets in it. The question is, how did the live round get in there? The question is not, how did the live round come out? The live round came out because all you had to do was touch that gun. There is zero evidence that Alec Baldwin knew there was a live round in there.

The armorer, the person in charge of maintaining the gun and maintaining the dummy rounds and the live rounds, beyond me why there are even live rounds there, but there obviously were. One of them killed the producer. The armorer has been indicted along with Baldwin. All the charges against Baldwin have now been dismissed. Can they be reinstated? Well, yes, they can. The statute of limitations in New Mexico is six years. It's an odd statute. Most states it's seven and the federal system it's five, except for certain crimes have their own unique statute of limitations, like tax evasion is 20 years. So he could be recharged if they develop new evidence against him. But as I speak, as I sit here, as you listen to me, the charges against Alec Baldwin have been dismissed, but not against the armorer.

She has been charged with reckless manslaughter because it was her job to make sure that a live round was not in that revolver. And, of course, it was. The woman that died, it's a tragedy. I mean, she did something you should never do. Never stand in front of a gun. Never, ever, ever, ever stand in front of a tragedy. I mean, she did something you should never do. Never stand in front of a gun. Never, ever, ever, ever stand in front of a gun. Maybe if the chamber is gone, is out of the gun, she was standing in front of a gun because she was trying to evaluate the camera angle that they should use. She wanted to judge where the camera should be to show Baldwin pointing the gun and never imagined that by his mere touching of it,

a round would go off and the round would be live and it would hit her and kill her almost instantaneously. It's a tragedy. It would be even more of a tragedy if Baldwin were charged with a crime that he didn't commit. Listen, I have to admit, he's such a goofball. He's such a character that when he said he didn't pull the trigger, I didn't believe him. A lot of us didn't believe him. We all know what he's like. I don't know him personally.

I know his brother, Billy, personally. Billy was at Fox a lot. But Alec, I don't believe him. A lot of us didn't believe him. We all know what he's like. I don't know him personally. I know his brother, Billy, personally. Billy was at Fox a lot. But Alec, I don't know. I admire his work. He's a good actor. He's hilarious. He does the best imitations of Trump around. I would imagine that there's a serious side to him.

And I, like others, wrongfully were judging him from his comedic side. But he was right and I was wrong. And it turned out that when he said whistleblower from the IRS in the investigation of Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower, who has not yet been named, has gone to his or her lawyer. The lawyer has said, my client is in management in the IRS, and my client wants to tell the Congress that other management in the IRS is going soft on Hunter Biden and is not following the standard rules of procedure that we follow when we suspect income tax evasion. Now that puts a lot of heat on Merrick Garland, the attorney general, because and get an indictment of Hunter Biden,

even if the events that caused the tax evasion occurred outside of Delaware. Normally, when that happens, you would need the permission of the U.S. attorney in the area where the crime took place. But Attorney General Garland has assured the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the U.S. attorney in Delaware, in Wilmington, Delaware, the Trump appointee, can on his own ask a grand jury to indict Hunter Biden, even if the criminal events occurred outside of Delaware. He doesn't need anybody else's permission to do it. Okay, that's established. He said it under oath. Now comes the whistleblower to say that that is not true. Here's the problem.

It is a felony for anybody to reveal income tax information about a person who's being invested for income tax evasion prior to the indictment. So I don't know what this so-called whistleblower told his or her lawyer, but whatever it is, it's a crime for this person to reveal it if it was revealed with specificity. If the whistleblower goes to a lawyer and says, you know what I do for a living? You've been my lawyer for many years. I'm a senior person in the IRS. And I can tell you that my colleagues are going easy on Hunter Biden. They are really, really, really towing the line. That might have crossed the line. I don't know. But if the whistleblower gets any more specific, then the whistleblower has committed a felony. So this is a conundrum. How can you be a whistleblower if by blowing the whistle you are committing a felony for which you

can be indicted? Welcome to America in 2023. That's the problem with the tax laws. So I don't know and cannot explain to you where this is going to go. But when Hunter Biden's lawyer says, whoever this whistleblower is, is yet unidentified, tells his lawyer, what's going on with my client's case? The whistleblower has committed a felony. It may be true, depending upon how much information was spilled. There should be more protection for whistleblowers. If the government is going easy on somebody because his father happens to be the president, if the government is going hard on somebody

because his last name happens to be Trump, if the government is making criminal prosecutorial decisions based on politics, We want to know it, and the means of telling us should not be a crime. It should be lawful to tell us. So this loophole in the whistleblower law, the certain things you can't reveal, even if you know the government is doing something wrong, that loophole, Chris getting excited, it's Friday afternoon, it's beautiful out, he wants to go outside, he'll be out in a few minutes, as soon as I stop, that loophole needs to be fixed. Mike Morrell, does the name ring a bell? He was the acting director of the CIA for 18 months,

an acknowledged Democrat, a political partisan, but worked his way up through the ranks of the CIA, then was employed by CNN. I believe he's still employed by CNN, was a finalist to run the CIA under Joe Biden, but didn't get it, went to Bill Burns, who's now the director of the CIA. Shortly before the election in 2020 was over, so we're now in late October, Mike Morrell got a bunch of former high-level intelligence officials to sign a letter saying this stuff about Hunter Biden's laptop is nonsense. It sounds like Russian misinformation. I don't know if these people seriously believed it at the time they said it, because it is now generally the belief of law enforcement that there is evidence of crime on that laptop. So I don't know if these people

told the truth when they wrote that letter. But Mike Morrell has recently acknowledged that he asked them to write that letter, not because he believed that this Russian information stuff was true, but because he wanted to help Joe Biden get elected because he was hoping that Joe Biden would, you guessed it, name him the director of the CIA. My friends, this is the way the government works. If you watched my interview with Larry Johnson today, the prosecutor who went easy on Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security advisor, who stole documents from the National Archives and then destroyed them, documents embarrassing to Bill Clinton, the prosecutor became a federal judge. Did he trade the federal judgeship for going easy on Sandy Berger?

I don't know. I'm not going to mention his name. This kind of thing happens in the federal government? Did these former senior intelligence officials really believe that the argument, the allegation that Hunter Biden's laptop was filled with evidence of crime implicating Hunter and perhaps implicating his father was Russian misinformation? Did they really believe it? They could say whatever they want. They have the First Amendment right to say whatever they want. When they're saying it as former high-ranking intelligence community officials, they lend the weight of their former offices to it. Is that right? I don't think it's criminal, but I don't think it's right. We'll see where this goes. I would suspect most of you are more interested in

whether or not Hunter is actually going to be prosecuted and whether or not there's evidence of crimes in that laptop or anywhere involving his father. If it is, if there is, we need to know about it. And if Mike Morrell did this just to help Joe Biden get elected president, he can do that, but he shouldn't be lending the prestige of his former office at the time and the former offices held by those 50 intel people to aid a political campaign. The Senate Judiciary Committee has invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify. I say invited. While they can't issue a subpoena, Senator Dianne Feinstein has not been seen in the Senate since February. She's 89 years old and ailing.

And she's either so ailing that she doesn't understand it's time to resign or she is refusing to resign. Without her on the Senate Judiciary Committee, there are 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. With her, there are 11 Democrats. A subpoena can only be issued by a majority vote of the committee. So the committee is stymied in its efforts to issue a subpoena, I guess to almost anybody, unless it happens to be something they all agree on or a majority of them agree on. But on this issue, did Justice Clarence Thomas violate rules of ethics by not reporting his financial dealings with a wealthy benefactor? I don't think he did, but the Senate wants to investigate it. They want to ask the Chief Justice. There are other people that they can ask, but again, they can't ask anybody if they don't have a subpoena unless that person is willing to come to the Senate voluntarily. Will the Chief Justice come voluntarily? I don't think so. Justices rarely testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm not talking about when they are a sitting justice who's been nominated to become chief or a sitting judge

or just a lawyer nominated to join the court. I'm talking about a sitting justice of the Supreme Court coming across the street to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That normally only happens under one circumstance, and that's involving money. That's when the court needs more money for its budget. It's not just its budget, it's the entire judicial budget. Or there's legislation giving justices and judges a raise and the court wants to express its support for that legislation. But expecting the chief justice on his own to walk across the street and testify about whether or not Justice Thomas violated the rules of ethics by his decision not to report this stuff. I don't think that that's going to happen. And finally, and it gives me no joy to discuss this, but Tuesday, April 25th, Donald Trump is a defendant in a rape trial in federal district court in New York City. to allow adult victims of sexual abuse to sue their abusers no matter when the alleged sexual abuse happened. So here's what happened. This lady, E. Jean Carroll, a now retired gossip columnist, accused President Trump of raping her. She made the allegation while Trump was in the White House. It was way too late for her to sue him, way too late for her to go to the police and say, investigate this. The alleged rape occurred in 1990. She made reference to it in 2019, some 29 years later.

President Trump, at a press conference, says, I wouldn't have done it. She's not my type. She's a liar. She sues Trump for defamation because he called her a liar. He made some other negative comments about her, which I won't repeat here. Trump says, I'm the president of the United States. I can't be sued while I'm in office. True. Trump also says, because I made these comments in my job as president, part of which is to answer questions at a press conference, the government should defend me, iffy. Because I'm an official of the government, when I made

these comments, the government should become the defendant in the case. Well, if the government is the defendant in the case, then there's no case, because case law says the government cannot defame you. So Trump makes an application before the trial judge in New York to force the Department of Justice to defend him and to supplant him, to replace him as a defendant in the case. The Department of Justice comes in and says, yes, we want to represent now former President Trump, and we want to be the defendants in his place. Mrs. Carroll's lawyers argue no. The trial judge says no. This had nothing to do, the things you said about her and whether or not you had this event with her in 1990, which she says was rape, which you say didn't happen.

None of this has to do with your official position as president. So the trial judge rules against the DOJ and against now former President Trump. The trial is scheduled to start this Tuesday. Just an hour ago, the circuit court declined to reverse the trial judge. So Donald Trump is on his own, defending himself with his lawyers, his own expense, at his own expense. The DOJ is not in the case. The DOJ is not going to represent Donald Trump, even though Joe Biden ordered the DOJ, maybe he knows something's coming in a couple of years, even though Joe Biden ordered the DOJ to defend Trump and to replace Trump as the defendant, the appellate court said no. So now on Tuesday, this rape case will start. The former president has not indicated whether or not he's going to be there. I don't know how his lawyers can defend the case if he's not going to be there. He has said he wants to take the

witness stand and deny that he ever had any intimate contact with this woman, much less rape. It would be impossible for them to advance that argument without Donald Trump physically in the courtroom. Are we going to go through what we went through three weeks ago when he was in another courtroom up the block as a criminal defendant to plead not guilty? I guess we'll find out on Tuesday when this trial starts. The rules are a lot stricter in federal court. There's a lot less leeway for, shall we say, any politicking going on, and they have the means to whisk him in and whisk him out without the public and without the media even knowing about it. Boy, his legal woes just never end. I'm not going to recount all the other legal woes,

but I just felt compelled to explain to you this Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that came down just as we were turning the camera on. If you like this stuff, like and subscribe. More as we get it. Another exciting week next week. Have a nice weekend. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.