Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/25/24 Leonard Goodman on the Government’s War on Ukraine War Dissent

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

Leonard Goodman, an attorney representing the Uhuru Movement, returns to the show to talk about the government’s ridiculous and dangerous case against his clients. He and Scott review the details before diving into why the government’s accusations are nonsense. Discussed on the show: Scott’s first interview with Goodman Leonard Goodman is a criminal defense lawyer, a columnist and an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul. Follow him on Twitter @GoodmanLen This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube dot com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got leonard goodman he is an attorney representing the uh-huhoo movement in their completely bogus and phony federal court case

welcome to the show how you doing i'm doing well scott Thanks for having me again. Very happy to have you here. So I really should go ahead and interview the guy you're representing. I'm just always in such a hurry, and I want to get right to the brass tax, which is the completely ridiculous and unconstitutional gangsterite behavior of our attorney general here in prosecuting this case. And I don't know what my problem is, Leonard, that I only this morning finally found and witnessed the surveillance video footage of the government's ATF at Waco-style paramilitary raids on your client and his associates here.

Can we just start with that? The absolute overkill when, you know, Hunter in a three-piece suit could have walked up there and knocked on the door and gained entrance with a warrant and instead they go for this paramilitary thing. It's in that just prejudicial in the first place to make it seem like they're up against, some kind of dangerous threat? And don't those cops feel like ridiculous weenies wearing 10 times more kit than our infantry in Iraq when they're in no danger whatsoever?

And they're just picking on innocent, unarmed American civilians in their neighborhoods? You're absolutely right. First of all, I represent, there's three people that have been charged and that were raided by FBI SWAT teams. from the yahuru movement this is a group that's been around since the 70s they're you know they're activists they're anti-war they're non-violent the leader of the group that's probably

the video that you watched is in his it is early to mid 80s omale yeshatella he his home was rated in July of 2022, along with his associate, Penny Horton, who's in her 70s, and then Jesse Neville. They were all rated. Their offices were rated a show of force. And you're right. It does send a message to activists that you better watch what you say. And this is, you know, it really, you know, I know your show is an anti-war show and I unite with you. I was actually listening to one of your interviews this morning with Matt Taibi.

And you're right. There is something incongruous about this show of force against anti-war activists, people that have been warning about the confrontation with Russia and trying to avoid it and talking about the danger of NATO expansion. I think one of the things that's so, troubling about this case is the timing because this was July, they were raided, their homes were raided and they were first named as unindicted co-conspirators and a federal indictment in July of 2022. So what was happening in July of 2022? Well, in February, that's when

Russia invaded Ukraine. And the official position of the Biden administration was that this was an unprovoked attack. This was Putin the madman attacking his neighbor for no reason. And this was parroted in all of the major mainstream media. The New York Times, I think was the biggest culprit, editorial after editorial, talking about the unprovoked invasion. And this is really George Orwell territory, because if you remember, from 1984, you know, so much of that book has come true in our lifetimes. Much of that, you know, part of the message of that book was you have to memory whole things. You cannot, you can't go back and look at history.

We were at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia. We can't, you can't remember that five years ago we were alive with Eurasia. That was a line from George Orwell. And that's really come to pass, I think, in this war more than any others, because a lot of the other wars, which, you know, you could go back to Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Second Iraq War, WMDs, those were things that the government could lie about, and there was not official information that you could go back and look, the New York Times, to show that they're wrong. this war, you really have to ignore history because, you know, as so many people have pointed out, Jeffrey Sachs in many articles, it's well documented. There's a diplomatic trail warning about NATO expansion. So our government knew, and in fact, some of this was disclosed by Julian Assange

and some of the WikiLeaks disclosures. Well, we have diplomats warning that if NATO expands, attempts to expand into Georgia and Ukraine, that creates an existential threat for Russia. We also have well-documented U.S. participation in the coup in 2014, which overthrew a Russian-friendly president of Ukraine and replaced them with a NATO-friendly president. So we have all of this. So you have the official mouthpieces of the United States government. telling us that we can't go back and look at history, we just have to accept that this was an unprovoked invasion. And the reason that's so important is because to get people to basically send

all of their resources to this war, which has absolutely no effect on U.S. security who control certain provinces in Ukraine. In order to get people to buy into it, you have to tell them that there's a madman on the loose. And if he can get away with this, Poland's going to be next, and then England and France. So this was all nonsense. Everyone knew it was nonsense. And yet this is how they had to sell it to the American people. And so the reason I bring that up is because O'Malley Eschatela and the Yahoo movement were one of the, one of the groups. groups that were out there prominently holding rallies and saying this was not unprovoked. This was provoked NATO expansion 800 miles towards Russia's border, U.S.

involvement, CIA involvement in the coup in 2014. So they were out there and they had been out there since 2014 and earlier warning about all of these issues. So they had to be silenced, and that's really, I think, the way I see it and the way, what's so dangerous about this case is you have the mainstream media on board with a consistent message that this is unprovoked. It's a completely bogus message. It's a historical, and you have somebody out there pointing out the truth. Others were too, but this group is a prominent group.

They have a large support in African American communities. voters that I think the Democratic Party thinks should be their voters. And so they were out there telling them a narrative that is not approved by the establishment. And they had to be silenced. So that's sort of the way I see this case. Hang on just one second for me here. You guys, I'm so proud to announce the publication of the Libertarian Institute's 14th book. It's Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War.

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Get tickets now. All right, now the accusation is that just like every single person who works in Washington, D.C., this guy was an unregistered agent of a foreign power. Is that true? Of course, it's not true. You know, I don't even think the government, they certainly don't believe it either because they know he's been saying the same things. What they found is that the group participated in a conference in Moscow in 2015 and established a relationship with the Russian national.

So that's basically the legal hook that they've used to call them Russian agents. Now, as you point out, you know, well, first of all, this group has traveled, they're an international group. They're an African nationalist group. They've traveled. They've participated in conferences in a dozen countries. and done exactly the same thing where they participated in conferences in foreign countries and established relationship with people with similar ideology and work together with foreign nationals from other nations on it unlike-minded causes. So there's nothing unusual that they

participated in a conference in Moscow in 2015. It wasn't secret. They have their own newspaper. They wrote about it. They wrote about their trips to Russia. So there's, you know, this is, this is part of Russia gate. The government intends to call experts who are basically Russia gate fanatics who are gonna tell us how dangerous Russia is. And if you associate with a Russian, you're probably a criminal.

That's really the basis of this case. It would be silly if it weren't so serious and they weren't facing 10 to 15 years in prison. So, you know, That's where we're at, and we have a trial date set for September 3rd. There's still, I think last time I spoke to you, I talked about a motion to dismiss based on the First Amendment because the indictment clearly, clearly violates the First Amendment. It's a dangerous case.

Even allowing it to go to trial is dangerous because it sends a message to activist groups that you better watch what you say. And there are certain things you just shouldn't talk about because you're going to incur the wrath of the security state. And this group never really followed those types of things. They've always been out there, anti-war. They've always been out there telling the truth as they see it. And the other thing that's interesting about this case, and I think I mentioned this last time. So anyway, I was talking about the motion to dismiss.

It's still pending. The judge has not ruled on it. But we still have a trial date of September 3rd. So I think our expectation is that he's going to deny it. but um well yeah i mean it is such an important case because uh as you say there's kind of a real danger of a precedent being set here if they can get away with prosecuting this especially when you're talking about a party that's been around for so long and saying the same thing all the time but so can you talk about the specific accusation about how much money

they supposedly took from this guy if they did take any at all where that money went and because I guess part of the accusation here is that they spent it on a local election. And also, by the way, we're almost out of time. So, sorry. Well, I'll start with the election. That's complete nonsense. I don't even think the government is going to press that. There's records.

This group, you know, they ran some candidates for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida. They understand you can't take foreign donations. that they never did. There's really no, that it's sort of a throwaway in the indictment, that the government was trying to influence their elections, but it's complete nonsense. There are specific allegations that they received in support about $7,000 over five years of their relationship with this Russian national. And that was to replace some out-of-pocket expenses. for activist activity. There was a four-city tour that they did,

or they called it a reparations tour in 2016, and most of the money that they received from Russia was to help pay some of the expenses for that tour. Didn't cover it all. It covered some. So this is a trivial amount of money. I mean, this is a group that has been around for quite a long time. They have a fairly large budget.

They do a lot of work in the community. They do a lot of activists work. I mean, these tours that they do, they have to bring along witnesses. This was in winter. They had heated tents. They had to feed people and house people. These were witnesses to the plate of African Americans in United States, people of African descent. So this was their work that they've done for 50 years. So they got a little bit of reimbursement from Russian National. It was insignificant. And again, it's an excuse. It's something that they're going to try to scare the jury with to say that these people are under- control, but no serious person could possibly believe that this group that's been saying the same thing and pressing the same issues for 50 years was suddenly had their heads turned by...

You know what, Leonard? I wonder if, in a way, if this is even really about them at all, or they're just being used as a cudgel in another public relations stunt against Russia. They had to come up with another little something, so they tried to put two and two together here and your client just got caught up in their scheme is all really that could very well be true i mean they spent four years telling us that you know trump was a russian agent and a manchurian candidate and that all fell apart sure i think they had to show that yeah there is something there there is really this dangerous um menace out there that is russia and you know they are controlling

uh u s yeah listen i'm sorry i i am so late and i have to go to my next interview now because we got a little bit of a late start here but uh it's always good to talk to you scott anytime yeah no problem i'm so happy to have you here i really appreciate the great work that you're doing not just for your clients here but to protect our first amendment and our right to engage in politics you know it's so funny that they use the foreign agent thing when foreign agents have far more say in american policy than the american people do it all here are the one time americans try to participate at all they call them foreign agents the thing so back ask for it drives me crazy but so um i appreciate the work that you're doing but i'm going to email you

um because i want to talk with you about russia gate because if they're going to bring a bunch of russia gay all-star cooks to the stand then i would like to help prep you for your cross-examination if you need any help with that because i happen to be yeah uh expert and how false all of that was i'm writing a book about it so um i'd love to talk with you about that in case you need any ammo for you know beating them over the head with up there i'll take you up on that scott thank you okay awesome thank you so much leon we'll talk again soon best to you all right bye all right the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com apse radio dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org