WEBVTT - Judge Napolitano 0:00:00.000 --> 0:00:05.640 830 at 55 KRC, the talk station. Happy Wednesday. Extra 0:00:05.660 --> 0:00:08.000 special always at this time on a Wednesday because we 0:00:08.020 --> 0:00:12.180 get to hear from Judge Andrew Napolitano. Welcome back, Judge Napolitano. 0:00:12.220 --> 0:00:14.280 It's great to see you. I get to see you anyway. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:15.900 Of course, hear your voice. Good to have you back 0:00:15.950 --> 0:00:17.750 on the show. Thank you, Brian. 0:00:17.770 --> 0:00:19.810 Good morning. Always a pleasure, my friend. 0:00:20.310 --> 0:00:24.360 And I... Okay, so... I read your column, and it's good. 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.260 It's a little depressing, I have to admit. But you 0:00:28.300 --> 0:00:31.360 didn't intend it to be uplifting. It's a warning to everybody. 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.500 Our failed Constitution, a great historical analysis of all the 0:00:35.540 --> 0:00:39.400 times those in elected capacity have pretty much torched some 0:00:39.500 --> 0:00:41.970 element of the Constitution in the United States. And you 0:00:42.010 --> 0:00:43.890 conclude with, well, we need to do something about it. 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.050 Liberty survives only when the governed insists that the government 0:00:47.090 --> 0:00:50.610 remain within its constitutional limits. If it won't, we must 0:00:50.770 --> 0:00:52.070 alter or abolish it. 0:00:54.130 --> 0:00:57.590 That is not me. That is Thomas Jefferson in the 0:00:57.650 --> 0:01:00.010 Declaration of Independence, almost word for word. 0:01:00.110 --> 0:01:06.660 Indeed. Are we at that time, considering the ongoing, multiple 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:10.200 across administrations, abuse of the Constitution, going all the way 0:01:10.260 --> 0:01:14.700 back to the Alien Sedition Act back in 1798, criminalizing 0:01:14.860 --> 0:01:19.020 criticism of government officials? Yes, we live in a country 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:21.700 that has a Constitution that actually had the Alien Sedition Act. 0:01:24.770 --> 0:01:27.230 Well, we're certainly at a time where we have to 0:01:27.470 --> 0:01:31.950 alter the government so that there is no incentive for 0:01:32.010 --> 0:01:36.900 government officials to violate the Constitution. Whether we abolish the government, 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:41.140 I mean, both of these things cannot happen overnight. I'm 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.280 not talking about violence. I'm talking about amending the Constitution. 0:01:45.340 --> 0:01:52.290 That is an enormous uphill path. But something needs to 0:01:52.310 --> 0:01:54.830 be done because the Constitution has just been abandoned. It 0:01:54.870 --> 0:01:59.130 just doesn't restrain the government anymore from wars to spying 0:01:59.210 --> 0:02:05.440 to suppression of speech to creation of debt to the massive, 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.720 massive spying on all of us now to a president 0:02:08.780 --> 0:02:12.739 imposing his own taxes, which he calls tariffs, all these. 0:02:12.780 --> 0:02:16.300 They're doing so even in the defiance of the Supreme Court. 0:02:17.980 --> 0:02:18.929 Where is all of this? 0:02:19.740 --> 0:02:22.799 Going to lead us indeed right now we are no 0:02:22.860 --> 0:02:30.300 longer a republic we are a failing bankrupt empire 800 0:02:30.300 --> 0:02:36.130 850 military and intelligence installations around the world a budget 0:02:36.169 --> 0:02:40.440 to support this of several trillion dollars i'm combining intelligence 0:02:40.700 --> 0:02:44.820 and uh and military and a congress that's a phrase 0:02:45.060 --> 0:02:47.060 afraid to say no well. 0:02:46.980 --> 0:02:50.560 Any failing social welfare state they spent us into oblivion 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:52.840 with the overspending and running the printing press to in 0:02:52.900 --> 0:02:55.019 support of you name it. And every one of these 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.519 failures and every one of these erosions of our freedoms 0:02:57.580 --> 0:03:00.560 and liberties and digging us further into is further into 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.639 a hole monetarily is always based on something. Oh my God, 0:03:03.660 --> 0:03:05.650 we've got to fix this problem. And who's better in 0:03:05.660 --> 0:03:07.870 the position to fix this than we, the federal government, 0:03:08.150 --> 0:03:09.829 there's starvation in the world. We need to create a 0:03:09.870 --> 0:03:12.670 social welfare program. There's evil people in the world. We 0:03:12.690 --> 0:03:15.389 need a giant military to fend them off, keep everybody afraid. 0:03:15.410 --> 0:03:18.280 And they keep funding it. I, this is, But I 0:03:18.300 --> 0:03:21.200 guess ultimately we get to the point where let's magically 0:03:21.260 --> 0:03:23.820 wave our wand, Judge Annapolitano, you and I, and come 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:25.590 up with a document that we start over with that 0:03:25.610 --> 0:03:27.989 you and I can find acceptable. But then we end 0:03:28.030 --> 0:03:29.889 up placing it in the hands of these people who 0:03:29.910 --> 0:03:33.050 will then use the crisis of the moment to ignore 0:03:33.130 --> 0:03:35.130 it like they've done with our current document. 0:03:35.690 --> 0:03:39.970 Well, two of the problems are the creation of the 0:03:40.050 --> 0:03:44.920 administrative state in the Wilson era and the creation of 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:49.270 the security state, sometimes called the deep state. in the 0:03:50.030 --> 0:03:52.990 Harry Truman era. I'm not a fan of Truman at all, 0:03:53.050 --> 0:03:56.570 but to his credit, shortly before he died, he denounced 0:03:57.250 --> 0:04:00.470 the CIA and said, this is not what I created. 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.140 These people have become a private army. They're overthrowing governments. 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.020 The CIA that I created was intended to spy on 0:04:08.100 --> 0:04:13.100 foreign governments, not on Americans. So we have two permanent 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.680 parts of the American government. I have called them the 0:04:17.740 --> 0:04:22.539 fourth and fifth branches, which are not transparent. They don't 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:26.580 answer to anybody, and they have the ability to threaten 0:04:26.660 --> 0:04:31.930 Congress into continuing to fund them, especially the security state 0:04:32.029 --> 0:04:36.349 or the deep state. Those two states have to be eradicated. 0:04:37.070 --> 0:04:40.650 That saves the government trillions a year, and it liberates 0:04:41.070 --> 0:04:47.180 members of Congress from being terrified by the intelligence community. 0:04:48.610 --> 0:04:54.550 The intelligence authorities come up for reauthorization every three or 0:04:54.589 --> 0:04:57.490 four years, and every time it looks like they're going 0:04:57.510 --> 0:05:00.950 to be clipped, members of Congress are paid visits by 0:05:01.029 --> 0:05:04.390 members of the intelligence community, and they suddenly change their minds. Gee, 0:05:04.450 --> 0:05:08.110 I wonder what happens in those private visits. That type 0:05:08.170 --> 0:05:12.750 of stuff has to stop. When government operates in secret, Brian, 0:05:13.330 --> 0:05:15.210 who is running the government? 0:05:16.630 --> 0:05:19.849 Amen, brother. It's a rhetorical question. Contemplate it yourself, listening audience. 0:05:19.870 --> 0:05:23.090 All right, real quick here, First Amendment, free exercise of religion, 0:05:23.130 --> 0:05:25.240 freedom of assembly. We all enjoy it. We all love it. 0:05:25.270 --> 0:05:26.870 You and I are big fans of it. The more 0:05:26.930 --> 0:05:29.230 speech you have, the more enlightened we become, the better 0:05:29.250 --> 0:05:31.800 we can come up with solutions to our problems. What 0:05:31.980 --> 0:05:35.780 of speech that threatens the existence of the United States 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.620 of America? We've had these conversations before, like the McCarthy era. Oh, 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:41.720 my God, commies are talking about communism. That's the antithesis 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:43.620 of capitalism in the United States of America. They need 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:45.730 to be dealt with. I don't know that we necessarily 0:05:45.750 --> 0:05:47.810 lock them up. We, of course, ostracize them, which is 0:05:47.830 --> 0:05:50.800 still possible to do here. But what of, and see, 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:54.420 communism doesn't involve religion. It's a political philosophy, so it 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.360 doesn't fall into that free exercise part. What happens when 0:05:57.460 --> 0:06:02.160 a religious organization or certain segments of a religion specifically 0:06:02.700 --> 0:06:06.710 are dedicated and committed to overthrowing the government and engage 0:06:06.770 --> 0:06:12.210 in actions in furtherance toward government overthrow? Violence, destruction of property, 0:06:12.610 --> 0:06:16.940 threats to individuals. There's got to be some point at which, 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.180 wait a second, there is a threat living here in 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.339 our backyard. And while they are protected by religious freedoms 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:25.700 and they are protected by the freedom of assembly, they've 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:29.230 crossed the line. Go ahead. 0:06:29.810 --> 0:06:33.610 The Supreme Court has ruled that a claim to religious 0:06:33.710 --> 0:06:37.890 freedom cannot trump, no pun intended, this was long before 0:06:37.930 --> 0:06:41.310 he was on the scene, cannot trump the enforcement of 0:06:41.330 --> 0:06:47.260 the ordinary criminal law. So a person can't burn down 0:06:47.300 --> 0:06:51.200 a government building and say, my religion compelled me to 0:06:51.260 --> 0:06:55.140 do it, or my religion authorizes it. That's absurd, and 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.210 the courts are very clear. In terms of threats, there 0:06:59.250 --> 0:07:04.310 must be a present apparent ability to carry out the threat. 0:07:05.230 --> 0:07:09.450 So if Hillary Clinton is giving a speech a bunch 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.180 of people show up with pitchforks and say, there she is, 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:16.400 let's get her. They have the present apparent ability to 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:21.290 harm her. That speech is prosecutable. But if the speaker 0:07:21.350 --> 0:07:25.190 is a thousand miles away, the speech is not prosecutable 0:07:25.730 --> 0:07:30.990 because there is no present apparent ability for the command 0:07:31.050 --> 0:07:34.600 of the speaker to come about. That's pretty much the 0:07:34.660 --> 0:07:38.950 Brandenburg case. Brandenburg, with which you're familiar, took place in 0:07:38.990 --> 0:07:42.810 Hamilton County, Ohio. Not on your watch or mine. That's 0:07:42.850 --> 0:07:46.050 a long time ago. The case is 1969. The events 0:07:46.110 --> 0:07:50.550 are about five or six years before that. Brandenburg is 0:07:50.610 --> 0:07:57.190 an effort to protect as much speech as is humanly possible, 0:07:58.430 --> 0:08:05.030 but not speech which actually causes violence. So God forbid 0:08:05.070 --> 0:08:08.130 we had in Washington, D.C., what's going on in Paris, 0:08:08.790 --> 0:08:12.310 even as we speak, and there are people in the 0:08:12.350 --> 0:08:16.180 midst of the crowd encouraging it, those people can be 0:08:16.260 --> 0:08:19.700 prosecuted for that speech. And if you don't know what's 0:08:19.740 --> 0:08:22.100 going on in Paris, just turn your television on. 0:08:22.340 --> 0:08:24.760 It's burning. Yeah, I'm a little worried about it. We 0:08:24.780 --> 0:08:27.060 seem to be only about one step behind Paris in 0:08:27.100 --> 0:08:32.020 terms of how far they've gone. But if you are coordinating... 0:08:31.260 --> 0:08:33.600 Let's go back to the religious organization. There is a religion. 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.780 It's got a place of worship. They are indoctrinating their 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:38.949 people to hate and detest the United States of America. 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.630 There are a whole lot of organizations out there that 0:08:41.670 --> 0:08:43.470 feel that way. Look at all the different organizations that 0:08:43.490 --> 0:08:45.729 have showed up to protest the French government, right? You 0:08:45.750 --> 0:08:47.450 can get a whole bunch of people together. If you 0:08:47.530 --> 0:08:51.370 are coordinating efforts to engage in criminal activity, you don't 0:08:51.410 --> 0:08:53.720 have to actually engage in the criminal activity under RICO, 0:08:53.740 --> 0:08:58.250 for example. It's just efforts in furtherance of criminal activity. 0:08:58.330 --> 0:09:01.830 So while they aren't personally involved in the crime, the 0:09:01.870 --> 0:09:06.230 destructive activity, they're working with others to have it come about. 0:09:06.490 --> 0:09:08.130 That is prosecutable, is it not? 0:09:08.990 --> 0:09:11.470 Generally, yes. I mean, it would depend if the person 0:09:11.570 --> 0:09:17.849 is on the sidelines cheering or actually, to use your word, coordinating, 0:09:18.070 --> 0:09:21.309 facilitating the flow of cash or the movement of weapons 0:09:21.370 --> 0:09:25.120 or the movement of people into the crime scene. Those 0:09:25.170 --> 0:09:32.450 are pretty basic criminal law questions and the masking the 0:09:32.490 --> 0:09:36.050 defense in the First Amendment doesn't work. 0:09:36.690 --> 0:09:39.670 Just needed to hear it from the master, Judge Anna Napolitano, 0:09:39.710 --> 0:09:40.890 Professor Napolitano. 0:09:42.490 --> 0:09:45.729 It hasn't been that in a while, but I do 0:09:45.770 --> 0:09:49.810 miss those days. It's very gratifying to see some of 0:09:49.950 --> 0:09:54.120 one's former students become state and federal prosecutors and judges. 0:09:54.620 --> 0:09:57.540 So I have that joy. I imagine it is. And 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.400 there's a couple of very influential professors and teachers in 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:02.780 my life, and I occasionally give them out loud credit 0:10:02.820 --> 0:10:07.160 for being so influential. Judge Annapolitano, Judging Freedom is the podcast. 0:10:07.179 --> 0:10:09.080 You're regular folks on the program today. 0:10:09.970 --> 0:10:14.810 Yes, Professor Morandi from Tehran, who always was an American, 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.780 who always gives us the inside look as to how 0:10:18.830 --> 0:10:25.230 the Iranian people are viewing what's happening. Professor Glenn Deason 0:10:25.410 --> 0:10:30.670 from Norway, why is Europe burning? And Phil Giraldi, the 0:10:30.820 --> 0:10:35.900 ex-CIA agent, warning, what will happen when the relationship between 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.500 Israel and the United States evaporates, which is what the 0:10:39.540 --> 0:10:42.140 Israelis expect to happen soon? 0:10:42.970 --> 0:10:45.290 Judge Annapolitano, we'll talk to you next Wednesday here on 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.680 the 55KRC Morning Show. Thanks, as always, for your willingness 0:10:47.700 --> 0:10:49.679 to engage in these talks with us. I appreciate getting 0:10:49.700 --> 0:10:51.640 the column early. I'll tell my listeners to look out 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.069 for it. Our failed Constitution comes out at midnight.