Transcript of 'Judging Freedom' 24 December edition

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Napolitano: 0:33
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for "Judging Freedom". Today is Tuesday, December 24th, 2024, Christmas Eve throughout the world. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure and thank you very much for joining us.

You have a very interesting and fascinating piece out on the new sovereignty and how the new sovereignty of the EU is creating tensions between national sovereignty and the sort of collective group sovereignty. But before we get there, how desperate is the Ukraine government that it has resorted to the assassination of a general in Moscow and now attacks on civilians 500 miles east of Moscow. What is the message that Ukraine is trying to send, and how is that message received in the Kremlin?

Gilbert Doctorow:
There's an old rather nasty expression, "If you can't do, teach." And there's also, I think, if you can't do it on the battlefield, then use terrorism. This is, you've used the word "desperate", and I think it's appropriate to define that, although the Ukrainians were doing this some time ago, even before they became desperate, on the front lines of Donbass. They have been engaged in terrorism, if we take the classic definition that that is what you do when you attack civilians to create terror, to create havoc and concern, and you are not fighting in the traditional military fashion of engaging the enemy on the battlefield. The Ukrainians are being slaughtered in the battlefield, or they are, as most recently, following the advice of leaflets that have been dropped to them and are surrendering en masse to the Russian forces ahead of what will likely be a very big attack by the Russians in the days ahead in advance-- I just would like to call it out-- in advance of Mr. Trump's inauguration.

2:44
The situation is continuing, loss of 30 square kilometers or more per day on the battlefield. And in this context, what do the Ukrainians do? They fire missiles at civilian targets, and they fire drones. Drones, of course, have longer range than the missiles in their present arsenal coming from the United States, and that's how they reached Kazan, which is, I think, a thousand kilometers away from the Ukrainian launch point.

And in Kazan, they staged something they knew would be very impressive on social media. That is, they had a drone with explosives fly straight into the middle of a high-rise residential building in downtown Kazan, creating an image of 9-11 terror, which was of course unjustified because when you looked at images after the fire went out, the damage to the building was rather slight, shall we say. This was not an airliner after all. There weren't 300 people on board and it wasn't loaded with jet fuel. So the damage was small, but the impression on social media was very big, which is about all they can achieve, just as the assassination of the general is not going to change the course of the war. But it creates a big provocation, an embarrassment for Vladimir Putin. Well, embarrassments don't cost you wars. Losing 2,000 people a day for ad infinitum on the battlefield, as Ukraine has done, that loses you wars.

Napolitano: 4:20
What is the impression that all of this has created in the Kremlin other than, as you've just indicated, a determination for some massive use of air power before January 20th?

Doctorow:
I think not only air power, I think ground power. I think they had been holding, I've heard something, 150,000 infantry were held in reserve for an assault and that may be what we may witness before Trump takes office, to make the negotiations with him all that more substantial and productive.

So he will not be listening any more to the completely false reports that he's been getting from the security team of Biden, but we'll be listening to the actual reports of devastating results on the battlefield that we'll be getting from Tulsi Gabbard.

Napolitano: 5:16
I wonder if General Kellogg is getting false reports. He, the emissary already appointed by Donald Trump and apparently already engaged in some sort of diplomacy, has been telling people that the Russians have suffered six times as many casualties as the Ukrainians, whereas the truth is the opposite. Where would General Kellogg be getting those numbers from?

Doctorow:
Well, from the same intelligence agencies in the States, from the CIA and elsewhere, and they're getting it from the Ukrainians. And I can say right now that any Ukrainian you touch, who in any sense represents his government, is saying the same absolute denial of reality that you hear. I've been in debates with two Ukrainians, one xxxxxx, two representatives of the regime in the last three days on an Indian television station. One of them was a member of parliament, the Rada, and the other was a British lieutenant colonel who has been an advisor to the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine. And they both were spouting the same utter nonsense about the way the war is going. So anybody that CIA or embassy people from the States in Kiev would be consulting, would be hearing exactly the same from the top and from the bottom of Ukrainians whom they meet.

Napolitano: 6:41
In your recent article on the new sovereignty, you advance the idea that there may very well be tension between the foreign policy and defense unity of the EU on one hand and the sovereignty of individual member states on the other. Can you elaborate on that please?

Doctorow:
Well, going back to 1992, there was a trade, there were various, let's say, abandonment or surrender of or ceding of sovereignty in various dimensions from individual member states of the EU to the European institutions in Brussels. And the foreign policy and defense policies were the first of these important normal attributes of a sovereign state which were transferred from these nation-states to a super-national organization, the European Union institutions in Brussels.

The consequence of that did not seem to be very great when this was going forward in 1992. These compromises were made to provide the way for a unified European currency and for the free travel and right to work of European citizens of separate states throughout the whole geography of the European Union. Very positive gains and didn't seem too much of a compromise, of a loss.

8:11
The losses have become clear now, when 27 nations or 25 of the 27 nations stand up and all repeat the same utter delusional statements about the Russian threat that they face, about the state of the war and prospects for Ukrainian victory. Now we understand that these states do not have the competent bureaucracies. They don't have their own personnel who are sufficiently trained to give them the basis for opposing what the people in the European Commission, the people who are serving Ursula von der Leyen, have usurped as the powers of 400 million people.

Napolitano: 8:57
Well suppose it is clear that, and I'm just going to make a hypothetical here, that the people of Italy and the government of Italy want to have nothing to do with arming Ukraine, that in fact they support the special military operation for various cultural, social, and historical reasons. What can they do about it? Can they hold back their share of monies that go to the European Union to crimp its ability to fund the Ukrainian war?

Doctoorow:
I think they can go across the party lines in the European parliament, for example, and join the forces of Viktor Orban's Patriots for Europe and vote as you just suggested, against what the European Commission has been foisting on them, a commission that is headed by Ursula von der Leyen. That is within-- to keep in mind, that the European Parliament is not a full legislative institution in the sense of the US Congress. It has no power of initiative, its resolutions are not binding and so forth. But nonetheless, by taking a stand, if the one-third of members of parliament who are in the fraction you can call Orban's grouping were to pick up more, then they could, by moral strength, take power away from Von der Leyen without her actually being impeached or removed for crimes against the Constitution. They have so far not done that, but I think it will be coming, particularly if Mr. Trump pursues a peace policy in his early days in office.

Napolitano: 10:57
Is the snuffing-out of the foreign policy of nation states in deference to the collective will, a step toward peace or a step toward totalitarianism, or just depend which side of the aisle you're on.

Doctorow:
We're speaking ideology now, and that is very important to bear in mind. Just as in the States, it is commonly accepted that nationalism breeds aggressiveness, that totalitarian or autocratic governments are fragile and therefore look to maintain their population under their control by waging wars. These are assumptions that are not backed by any facts, but they are assumed by 99 percent of the American political science community.

11:46
So it is here in Europe that the assumption was that individual states and the tensions that come out of them, the ambitions that come out of them, were the cause of two civil wars in Europe that were completely self-destructive. The first civil war was called World War I, and the second civil war in Europe was called World War II. And that the way to get out of this trap is for the states to pool their sovereignty in a supranational organization. All of this was wonderful when the constitution of the EU was written by some very intelligent, very progressive, very well-read and very humane political scientists and statesmen. They did not anticipate that the institutions [that] were created would be taken over by the very primitive and warlike people who run the EU today. So the institutions have no checks and balances.

Napolitano: 12:46
What happens to the EU and what happens to NATO if Donald Trump, after he becomes president, says "Forget about it. I'm not giving you guys a nickel"?

Doctorow:
I think Trump could have a very big impact on the evolution of the EU institutions. First of all, just taking the case of Viktor Orban, like it or not, he is perceived within European institutions as their link to Trump. And any attempt by Ursula von der Leyen to suggest that she's just chattered up Trump and that she can bring the latest word, will be viewed with very great skepticism by all of her colleagues, because they all know the facts. Orban is Trump's representative within Europe, and the power balance will change accordingly.

Napolitano: 13:37
What about the economics of funding Ukraine? So we've got two different stories here. One is, you probably know this, Professor, yesterday's "Financial Times" reported that the Trump transition team has told Kiev and has told European leaders that he will continue the flow of arms, at least in the short term, after he's inaugurated, contrary to what he promised many, many times during the campaign. And two, Russian impatience at the understandable at the use of a British, American, and other Western projectiles landing inside the Russian land mass.

Doctorow:
I'll take the second part of your question first. The Russian reaction to Trump in the first weeks after his victory at the ballot box was quite negative. As I've said on various programs since, it was perceived that he could be no friend. He appointed these neocon personalities to what the Russians call the power ministries, the most important defense and intelligence positions.

14:59
And so they were very skeptical, and they were saying, why should we wait? Let's do what we have to do in Ukraine. We're not going to wait and be nice to Trump, because it doesn't look like we can expect anything good. And then about 10 days ago, Trump came out with a statement that the use of American HIMARS and ATACMS missiles or the use of British Storm Shadow missiles with American permission to strike deep into Russia was a foolish and very dangerous decision by Joe Biden. And then the Russians sat up and listened closely. And they said, "Hey, look, maybe we should be a little bit more cautious with Trump. Maybe we can reach an understanding."

Napolitano: 15:44
What is your view on the report in the "Financial Times"? Is that likely accurate, or do we just don't know?

Doctoorow:
The British have a wonderful expression for that. "They would say that, wouldn't they?"

Napolitano:
Okay. All right. Is it true that President Fico of Slovakia was offered this number, staggering, Professor Doctorow, a $500 million bribe by President Zelensky of Ukraine to side with the Ukrainians?

Doctorow: 16:22
Well, I don't know how extensively this was reported in US media. I can say that it was reported in Russian media. And knowing Mr. Fico, knowing he had a near-death experience, and that he is remarkably brave, he had no reason to exaggerate or even to present something that never happened. So let's assume that he said the truth, but let's go beyond that. What does that mean? It means that when Elon Musk gets going on the audit of US spending in Ukraine, expect to see a lot of dirt coming out.

American political commentators are in large agreement that the Israeli lobby has an unreasonable and very unfortunate control over the U.S. Congress and over U.S. foreign policy. I haven't heard anyone raise the question of what kind of control Mr. Zelensky has had over certain of our senators who are loudmouth enthusiasts for a war, Lindsey Graham for example. These people, have they been on the take? Would it surprise you on if they were on the take? I don't think so. There's a reason for everything.

Napolitano: 17:40
Senator Rand Paul, libertarian in the Senate, and Congressman Thomas Massie, libertarian in the House, each introduced legislation that would have accompanied the largess coming from the United States to Ukraine, that would have imposed an inspector general on the ground in Ukraine, American team auditing how every dollar was spent. What do you think happened to those two proposals? They never even made it to the floor for a vote.

Doctorow: 18:11
Well, this more or less confirms the kind of suspicions that I'm putting on the table, that there were interested parties in this. There's no need to be surprised. I mean, politics is dirty, it always was. And here in Europe-- just to give you an example of what's likely to happen when this inspection comes through-- I think we'll find a lot of European politicians were on the take.

I'm speaking to you from Brussels. In Brussels, the latest news since December 1st has been the charges raised by the state prosecutors against Didier Raynders, who was for 20 years a minister in one portfolio or another portfolio of the various coalition governments we've had. And he was, together with Charles Michel of the same party, the Reform Movement party, they moved from their positions in the Belgian government, through a whole succession of coalition governments, into the European institutions. They left because they more or less, the Flemish majority had enough of these characters running the government.

19:15
Well, they moved to nice positions. A cushy job, you know, that Charles Michel, until December 1st, was the president of the European Council, where all 27 heads of state and government convened, regulated to form EU policy. And Mr. Reynders, who had been in Belgium various ministerial responsibilities, eight years long finance minister, several years foreign minister, and he was given the wonderful post of justice minister, which is particularly attractive to remember, now that he's being charged with money laundering. He'll probably spend the rest of his life in jail. He was on the take.

Napolitano: 19:50
Well, let me tell you a little bit about money laundering. Well, first of all, what is the source of the information that President Zelensky offered a bribe to President Fico. Is it from President Fico's mouth himself?

Doctorow:
Exactly.

Napolitano:
Oh boy. Well, under fed-- where would that money have come from to bribe him? Let's say he accepted the bribe. Where would Zelensky get that cash from? From the United States. And under federal law, that makes Zelensky's offer to Fico a felony. So if the feds want to kidnap President Zelensky in Kiev and bring him to Arlington, Virginia, their favorite place to bring people from overseas that they kidnap. That's where Dulles Airport is. He could very well be charged with offering a bribe of American funds that's punishable by 20 years in a federal prison.

Doctorow:
No, he could get the Noriega treatment.

Napolitano:
He could get the what?

Doctorow:
The Noriega treatment. The Panama--

Napolitano:
What is that? The Panama leader who was--

Napolitano:
Oh, Noriega, yes, I'm sorry I misheard you.

Right, right, right. But Panama's back in the news, and it's reminded people about George H.W. Bush turning on his important and valuable CIA asset Manuel Noriega because he knew too much and had to be locked up in Florence, Colorado. That's the American supermax prison that's 250 feet below the surface of the earth.

Did you want to talk to me about Azerbaijan and its relationship to Russia? Is there something there we need to know about, Professor Doctorow?

Doctorow: 21:35
Yes, for a number of reasons, but let's start with my source. A day ago, the Russian state television released an interview, an hour-long interview, that the head of Russia today, Dmitry Kiselyov, took with the president of Azerbaijan, Aliyev. And they touched on a variety of things. The most important, there were two important points to come out of this.

One is that Mr. Aliyev, who has been sitting on the fence, was sitting on two chairs between East and West for a large part of his tenure as president, which began in 2003. He has clearly come down on the side of Mr. Putin, because in that interview he repeated verbatim the argumentation and the language that Putin has used steadily as this special military project has gone on, the operation has gone on. That is the importance of national sovereignty and that the-- and looking after national interests and opposition to the neo-colonialism of France and other European powers.

22:47
The interesting thing here was secondly, his relations with Turkey, because this answers the question that many of us have had: what is Russia going to do with Turkey after what seems like a stab in the back over Syria for their failure to follow the agreements that these countries, Russia and Turkey, had agreed with respect to Syria and its post-Civil War arrangements?

23:17
Well, I think that considering what Mr. Aliyev said, Russia and Turkey will find an accommodation maybe a year down the road, two years, and that finally Turkey will be invited into BRICS. And why do I say that? Because Aliyev was explaining that since 1992, he has had a, that is his father signed a cooperation agreement that included a military agreement, military defense, mutual defense pact, and that Turkey has played a very large role in modernizing the Azerbaijani military forces, provided it with equipment. We know that it was Turkish equipment and drones that enabled Azerbaijan in one or two days to defeat the forces of the Nagorno-Karabakh and retake this land.

24:13
So they have a close relationship in defense with, as the only country that has good relations with Russia, which also has a defense treaty with a NATO country, that is Turkey. This rather complicated set of relations where the man himself, Aliyev, is very sympathetic to Russia, where he got his degree, undergraduate and his PhD degree in Moscow, and where he taught for five years, and is a perfect fluent Russian speaker, and he was sitting on the fence and he no longer sits on the fence. He actually uses the very terminology, particularly use of the word "national sovereignty", that Mr. Putin has made the rallying cry of the global south against the US global hegemony.

Napolitano: 25:09
Wow. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. One last question: will [Vlodymyr] Zelensky still be the president of Ukraine in Christmas of 2025, a year from now?

Doctorow:
He'll be lucky to make it past January, if indeed. It all depends really on how quickly Trump finds common language with Putin. The Russians will not accept to do a deal with Zelensky. They don't consider him to be a legitimate head of state. And so his departure would depend on how quickly Trump and Putin agree to meet and to proceed jointly without the Ukrainians present to decide the fate of Ukraine.

Napolitano: 26:01
Professor Gilbert Doctorow, a pleasure my dear friend. Thank you for all of the time you have given us in 2024. I hope that we can continue to work together in the new year. Merry Christmas to you and to your family.

Doctorow:
Thanks, most kind of you. And to you a Merry Christmas as well.

Napolitano:
Thank you. Thank you very much. Coming up later today, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at nine o'clock in the morning, Aaron Maté at 10. And our cleanup hitter at the end of the day and the end of the week and the end of the year, at 11 o'clock Scott Ritter.

26:36
Judge Napolitano for "Judging Freedom".