Judging Freedom - Why 2 Trump Grand Jurys_ _ Jordan demands DOJ memo _ SCOTUS & IRS

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 7th, 2023. It's about 4.35 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today and for the week, and they're an interesting variety, from why are there two grand juries investigating Donald Trump and the alleged misappropriation of documents at Mar-a-Lago, to can the IRS get your bank account without you even knowing about it, to what were the 20 spy chiefs of the country, of the world's leading spy countries, all doing in Singapore for a week, and why didn't any of us know about it? We'll start with Donald Trump. So the Feds revealed inadvertently that not only is there a grand jury investigating the alleged espionage, the failure to keep safe and secret documents, national defense information, investigating Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. That's the grand jury before which the feds have been parading a lot of witnesses, including three of Trump's former lawyers. But they also revealed that they are using another

grand jury in Miami, and they have begun parading witnesses before that grand jury. So why two grand juries? Why one in D.C. and one in Miami? So here's how it works. When the feds come knocking and say, we want to talk to you, usually it's an FBI agent knocking at your door. It's not a phone call and it's not a letter and it's not an email. If you say, sorry, go take a hike, the FBI agent will come back with a subpoena and the subpoena will require you to speak not with that FBI agent, but to answer questions before a grand jury. If you say to the FBI agent, okay, I'll talk to you, then you'll go downtown and be interviewed by one of the prosecutors presenting the case to the grand jury so that the prosecutors will know ahead of time

what you're going to say, and they will decide whether or not they want the grand jury to hear it. In the first scenario, this hypothetical, where you told the FBI to go take a hike, which by the way, you can always do, and which by the way, you should always do. You can say it more politely like, here's my lawyer, talk to my lawyer. But when you decline to talk to the FBI and they show up with a subpoena and you go before the grand jury, they don't know ahead of time what you're going to say. The grand jury's purpose is to hear evidence of crimes. You may very well be presenting evidence that is exculpatory, evidence to show that the defendant, in this case Donald Trump, did not commit the crime. So that's why they have two grand juries,

because they are putting witnesses on whom they've not yet interviewed, witnesses who refuse to talk to them, witnesses who refuse to talk to their FBI agents. So they put those witnesses on before the grand jury in D.C., and then if they like what you tell the grand jury in D.C., you'll get a round trip plane ticket to Miami where you'll testify before that grand jury. Now, why Miami? Well, that's where the federal courts sit closest to where Mar-a-Lago is. did what the government says he did, the failure to secure NDI, National Defense Information, hiding NDI from the government, knowing it was government property. That's also called obstruction of justice. If he did that, he has to be charged in the judicial district in which

the crime was committed, which means the Southern District of Florida, which means the Southern one-third of Florida, the headquarters of which for federal prosecutors and federal judges is in Miami. So if the president is going to be in, the former president is going to be indicted for the failure to safeguard NDI, National Defense Information, this has nothing to do with classified. We're way ahead of that. I've explained that a number of times. That indictment is going to come from Miami. And if persons are going to testify before a grand jury who refused to be interviewed ahead of time,

they're going to go to D.C. And only if the feds like what they say to the grand jury in DC, will they then go to the grand jury in Miami. A little bit complicated, a little bit inside baseball, but that's why there's two grand juries. Robert Mueller of the famous Mueller report investigating president Trump while he was still president also used two grand juries for the same reason. They had a grand jury in Arlington, Virginia, which was the one before which they paraded all of their witnesses. And then they had a grand jury in D.C., which was the one that only heard the witnesses that the government wanted the grand jury to hear,

which if there had been an indictment, there wasn't, it would have come from there. Why the indictment from the district in which the crime allegedly was committed? The Constitution requires it. Why does the Constitution require it? Ah, good question. Because the British often would charge American colonists with crimes and try them in London. So to make sure that this would never happen here in the new United States of America, James sure that the Constitution says that a person must be indicted and tried in the judicial district in which the crime was committed. I'm getting a little ahead here. If the crime was committed outside the United States, then the judicial district in which the person first lands in the United States is the place for trial. So if you land in San Francisco, that's where you'll be

indicted and tried. If you land at Dulles International Airport, you don't want to land there. That's the grand jury and the federal courthouse where the feds never lose. So when a person commits a crime overseas, they always make sure that that person is brought to the U.S. and lands at Dulles so that the indictment and the trial is that courthouse. I don't know what it is about that courthouse. I don't know what it is about the judges. I don't know what it is about the jurors in that part of the country, but they always vote to convict. Okay, so that's why there are two grand juries. Remember, this has nothing to do with classified documents. This is NDI, National Defense Information, which is always and everywhere unlawful to

possess outside of a secure federal facility, even for the president. If Joe Biden took NDI to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he'd be committing a federal crime, even though he is the president, because NDI can only be viewed in a secure federal facility. His home in Rehoboth, Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home in Bedminster, New Jersey, his home at Trump Tower in New York, none of these is a secure federal facility. At the time the Espionage Act was enacted, there was no classification system. So it only refers to national defense information. It doesn't refer to whether it's classified or whether it's unclassified. espionage combined with obstruction of justice. And we have every reason to believe that he will soon be indicted for both charges. I think I spoke yesterday or two days ago about his lawyers throwing a Hail Mary pass. That's the final meeting between the defendant's lawyers and the prosecutors. One last Hail Mary, one last opportunity to try and dissuade the prosecutors from asking for

an indictment. Did it work? I don't think so, but I wasn't there. We'll find out. We'll find out very soon. Okay. The CIA leaked to the Washington Post, its favorite place for leaking information, that U.S. intelligence knew about the Ukrainian plan to attack the Nord Stream pipeline before it was attacked. This leak and this article in the Washington Post are both absurd. We already know who destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline. That's the pipeline from Russia to Germany, which was feeding very cheap Russian national or natural gas to Germany, so cheap, so plentiful, the Germans were able to resell it to other public utilities in countries in Northern Europe. We know from the incredible investigative journalism by the great Seymour Hersh that the North Stream

Pipeline was destroyed at the order of Joe Biden by the American CIA and by U.S. Navy divers. Hersh even has quotes in there from people who participated in the preparation for this in Pensacola, Florida. Interestingly, where both the CIA and the Navy have their undersea demolition teams working. How do you explode a bomb underwater? That's where they trained. That's where they planned for it. This nonsense in the Washington Post today is just that nonsense. Why the CIA is now

trying to come out with this false cover story is beyond me, because everybody in the Western world that follows this stuff knows that Cy Hersh came down with the correct analysis here. Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is demanding of the Justice Department a memo outlining the scope of the probes of former President Donald Trump. That would be, as far as we know, two probes. The one I just talked about, the two grand juries, D.C. and Miami, for the documents at Mar-a-Lago and the other for Trump's involvement, if any, in the events of January 6th at the Capitol building. This memo, of course, will never come forward. This is what's called work product. This is the impressions of lawyers

analyzing the facts that FBI agents brought to them to the law that the Congress has written to be presented to Jack Smith, the special counsel, to be presented to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who will decide whether or not to let Mr. Smith and his team seek an indictment before the grand jury. In my opinion, they have decided to seek the indictment in both cases. And in my opinion, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, will say yes. The question is, can the House Judiciary Committee get their hands on the thoughts, the impressions reduced to writing by the special prosecutor's team before they seek the indictment? And the short answer is no. And the long answer is no. This type of work product, the federal lawyer's internal thoughts reduced to writing their analysis of should we or shouldn't we indict? What is the evidence for indicting? What are

the reasons for not indicting? This is never revealed. It's never revealed to a judge. It's never revealed to the defendant's lawyer. It would never be revealed to the House Judiciary Committee. If they subpoena it, the DOJ will either just ignore the subpoena or move to quash it. At the same time, this is going on, the House Judiciary Committee has voted or is in the preliminary stages of voting to hold Chris Wray, the director of the FBI, in contempt for failure to produce a document which allegedly demonstrates that Joe Biden, when he was the vice president of the United States, took a bribe. Obviously, I haven't seen the indictment or the document. The committee hasn't seen the document. The committee had, not has, had a whistleblower who said she saw the document.

That whistleblower has either changed their mind or absconded. They can't seem to find her. Can the committee get their hands on that document? Okay. Can the committee and can the House of Representatives hold Chris Wray in contempt? Remember, there's two types of contempt, civil and criminal. Civil contempt, I don't think Chris Wray could care less what a Republican House decides is civilly contemptuous, just like Eric Holder, the Democrat Attorney General under President Obama couldn't have cared less what a Republican House decided he did that was allegedly contemptuous. So holding an official in the executive branch in contempt for failure to produce a document, the official in the executive branch will just brush it off his or her shoulder. If they really want to hold Chris Wray in contempt,

they would have to persuade a federal judge to allow Chris Wray to be prosecuted for contempt. And at the end of the prosecution, the judge would order him to cough up this document. And then if he doesn't do it, he goes to jail. Would a judge allow such a prosecution? We won't know unless the House Judiciary Committee tries it. Is the House Judiciary Committee serious about holding Chris Wray in contempt? Not if they're just going to do the civil contempt. The only serious contempt, the only one that bites, that stings, that changes the career of the person being held in contempt is the criminal contempt, and that can only come when the courts are involved. So I have to like Jim Jordan. I think he's got tremendous courage. He might single-handedly prevent Section 702 of the FISA Act from being reenacted. It

expires at Christmastime. That's the one that allows the feds under some circumstances to spy on foreign persons and the Americans with whom they communicate without a search warrant. He is appalled by that, as appalled as I am. He might single-handedly prevent that from happening. I hope he does. But I'm not sure he's serious about holding Chris Wray in contempt. If he were, he knows. I don't think he's a lawyer, but he's got lawyers that work for him. He knows that the only serious contempt, the only one that bites, the only one that stings, the only one that truly produces what you want is the criminal contempt. Supreme Court just unanimously ruled that the IRS

can request bank account information without notice to you. Wow. So if you owe the IRS money, and if you agree that you owe them money, or if they have a judgment against you, they can find out where all of your bank accounts are and the bank accounts of your spouse and your children and your business partners without even telling you. The normal rule is if the IRS is going to subpoena information about you from some third party, your accountant, your lawyer, your banker, they have to serve you with a copy of the subpoena so that you can go to a federal court to get the subpoena quashed. Not if it's in aid of collection, not if they already have a judgment against you or if you've already filed the tax returns admitting that you owe this much money. Then they can get banking information from

your spouse, your children, your banker, your lawyer, your accountant without telling you. Nine to nothing, the Supreme Court rules on that. And finally, as if that weren't enough for our hot topics of today, the world's spy chiefs met in a secret conclave in Singapore. Did you know about that? No. They managed to keep the press away. There are a half dozen photographs which they released. So who was there from the United States?

Averill Haynes, the director of national intelligence was there. There were 200 people from 20 different countries at this secret gathering, which went on for a week at a five-star hotel in Singapore. The CIA was surely there. MI6 was surely there. That's the British spy service. The Mossad was surely there. So spies spying on spies. If you heard Phil Giraldi today in his segment on judging freedom, then you know that all the spies expect to be spied upon. So what do they talk about when they're all spying on each other? I don't know. China was there. China's spies were there. The Secretary of Defense, who's not in the spying business, but of course there is the

DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which are the military spies. Those folks were there. But I guess Secretary Austin had to be very careful about what he said to his Chinese counterpart because everybody was listening. Not that they were saying it in public, but the place was being monitored by all the spying entities that were there, including, of course, the most effective spying entity on the planet. No, that's not the CIA and it's not the British. It's the Israelis. It's the Mossad. Were the Israelis there? Yes. Was the Mossad there in droves? Was the Mossad there participating in the conference? Yes. Was the Mossad listening to everybody else there?

Were the Australians listening to everybody else there? Were the British listening to everybody else there? Were the Americans listening to everybody else there? Were the New Zealanders listening to everybody else there? I'm telling you about the five I's, as in these kind of eyes on your head. United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, I'm skipping one, the five eyes, always exchange information with each other and, of course, spy on each other. So what is the purpose of 200 spies from the 20 top countries in the world, except for Russia, meeting there and exchanging information when they're all spying on each other? Well, the Russians were there, and the Russians were spying on everybody else, and everybody else knew that the Russians were there. They weren't officially there.

They weren't invited, but their spies were there. It almost makes this sound ridiculous that all this spying goes on all the time and all the spies spy on each other, even on allies. We spy on the Brits. The Brits spy on us. We spy on the Israelis. The Israelis spy on us. We spy on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians spy on us. And on and on and on the Israelis. The Israelis spy on us. We spy on the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians spy

on us. And on and on and on it goes. And we all pay for it. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.