Judge Napolitano - Killing the Constitution at Gitmo

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Channa nine first one to weather orcast. It is going
to be a cloudy day to day. A few flurries
are possible. Hid twenty four down to three degrees overnight
with clouds sunny tomorrow. Actually the clouds are moving out overnight,
sunny skys tomorrow with the I have twenty two clouds
return Thursday night dropping to five degrees and a high
thirty On Friday, clouds and snow backed maybe one to
even four inches twenty Right now, time for a traffic update.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
From the UCLF Traffic Center. You see how play Boss
center offers comprehensive of BCD care and advanced surgical expertise
called five one three nine three nine two two sixty three.
And that's nine three nine twenty two sixty three. All
wlanes are blocked. No, it's been two seventy five with
a truck fire before you got the twenty eight and
no Ford that traffic is quickly backing up past the Parkway.

(00:48):
Better news on southbound seventy five. They cleared the accident
above Paddock, but lanes open again. Traffic is getting better
through block one. There's a wreckc on Liberty at Dalton
coming up next for the first time in twenty twenty five,
a gentleman who's going to help us celebrate National Bubble
Bath Day. So go ahead, grab your phone, click the

(01:09):
iHeartRadio app, and sit back and relax and listen to
our own mister Bubble. The Judges next Chuck Ingram on
fifty five krs the talk station.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Hey thirty three, if you give out Pierce Talk Station,
I'm not accusing him, your honor, but I just want
to let you know marijuana is legal in the state
of Ohio. So maybe that answers the question how he
came up with that one? No idea?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
How about this? Some thing's never changed it?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well? Yeah, starting the year, starting the year off on
a consistent note. Wow, all right, well anyhow, welcome back
in a happy new year. I cannot how many years
have we been at this year, Honor. It's just time
flies by so quickly. But it's been like a decade,
hasn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yes, yes, it does seem that way.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
My dear friend, always makes the week more special to
have you on the show. So I can't thank you
enough for spending time with my listeners and me every
Wednesday at this time. And of course I'm you know,
I'm in a great position here to get the advance
copy of your column coming out tonight at midnight. Killing
the Constitution at Gitmo. We've talked about GITTMO quite a
few times and the trampling on constitutional rights and the

(02:23):
idea that torturing people is of course inappropriate, and all
the whys and warforce. But as I understand, the administration
released eleven of the GITMO detainees after twenty years of incarceration.
They got like fifteen left, including college Sheik Muhammad. Were
these the ones that are still there? Were they the

(02:45):
ones that were subject to that plea deal they pulled
the plug on last minute?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yes, yes, and the plea deal. This is interesting, Brian.
You'll appreciate it as an attorney, and people generallyamiliar with
the system will Normally, these plea deals are instigated by
the defendants because they want to reduce their exposure to
jail time or in this case, they want to avoid

(03:13):
the death penalty. This plea deal was instigated by the prosecutors.
This is the second full team of prosecutor. Prosecutors rotate
in and out. That's the problem with the military at tribunals.
Military assignments change every three or four years. There was
no human being in the College Sheik Muhammad case today

(03:34):
who was in it when it was started except for
a couple of the defense lawyers and College Sheik Muhammad
himself were on Judge number five and complete change of
prosecutorial team number two. The judges rotate through every four years.
The prosecutors rotate in and out. The prosecutorial team is huge.
Full disclosure. I was consulted by the or. I consulted

(03:59):
the first prosecutorial team because the general, the chief prosecutor,
Mark Martin's, was and is a friend of mine, and
we spent the day discussing their civil liberties issues. I
was in a room with ten other people. None of
those people is in the case today. Okay, so you've
got a completely different set of prosecutors. They look at

(04:20):
the evidence of torture and say, A, we can't defend
this or we will lose our licenses to practice law. B.
Therefore we're not going to use any evidence obtained from
the torture. Therefore, C we're going to initiate settlement negotiations.
They do it. The judge says, fine. The judges Judge

(04:43):
number five in order for him to try the case.
He has to read hang on to your chair, forty
thousand pages of documents and transcripts accumulated by Judges one
through four. Buddy has an interest in settling this. They
agreed away settlement which takes the death penalty off the table,

(05:06):
which takes Florence, Colorado, America Supermax two hundred and fifty
feet below the service of the Earth off the table,
which requires a guilty plea under Oath standard and federal court,
but at which the judge, the prosecutors, and lawyers for
the victims can interrogate College Sheik Muhammad, and if he

(05:27):
doesn't answer truthfully, he can be prosecuted for perjury. That
plea deal is signed off on by the judge, the
prosecutors of the defense, attorneys, the defendant himself, and the
General in the Pentagon in charge of all of these prosecutions,
herself a former chief of the Military Court of Appeals.

(05:50):
When Lloyd Austin, the Separatary of Defense, finds out about this,
and I'm not going to go along with it. I
want them exposed to the death penalty. He then orders
the military prosecutors who instigated the settlement, who crafted the
settlement to who got the judge to accept it, to
ask the judge to change his mind. Judge said, sorry,
this is a contract. It's a deal. It's reduced to writing.

(06:11):
Everybody signed it. That was appealed to the Military Court
of Appeals last week. The Military Court of Appeals upheld
the plea agreement. Next week that plea will take place.
So that's where we are now. It involves two other people.
And by the way, they get a much nicer place

(06:34):
to live at Gittmo. Nobody would want to live at Gitmo,
but it's a hell of a lot nicer than two
hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the earth
in Florence, Colorado.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Well, I guess that has to be viewed. I mean
by I think a rational reasonable person as a good outcome,
because well, in.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
A good outcome because of the image done to the
judicial system or the creation of this Devil's island, and
by the torture. If College Sheik Muhammad had not been tortured,
and if the prosecutors didn't have this problem of torture

(07:13):
about which I've written extensively, and you and I have
spoken extensively, and if this were just a simple prosecution
in the Southern District of New York. He would either
have been executed by now or in Florence, Colorado for
the rest of us life, or acquitted and sent home.
He wouldn't have been on trial for twenty years and

(07:34):
on Judge number five.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
And that actually is amazing. And I presume that the
new batch of prosecutors that come in for the fourth
time or however many also would have had to go
through forty thousand pages of transcripts and evidence and information, yes,
in order for them to come to the scripts.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
That's correct. You mentioned the eleven people that Biden let
go under cover of darkness. I don't blame him for
doing undercover darkness. They were there for twenty years. They
were all tortured. None of them was charged with a
single offense.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
And see that's what I was.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Incarcerated, confined, tortured in jail for twenty years, not charged
with a crime, not prosecuted. This is America. It shouldn't
be happening to anyone.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. I mean, it's
one of those there but for the grace of God
go I I mean, we locked up Japanese citizens in
the United States and internment camps back of World War Two.
I still can't believe that happened, but it's a historical fact.
So you really do have to take this very seriously,
regardless of how you feel about any of the guys
that got let go. But in terms of let's just
focus real quickly on colleague shik Muhammad. Do you have

(08:45):
any concept of what evidence would remain that would be
able to be presented to the jury once you pull
out the torture testimony, the stuff that would be inadmissible
in any court of law in the United States. Is
there still efficient evidence of criminality, such as you could
get proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy was
guilty of something worthy of incarceration or possibly even the

(09:08):
death penalty.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
You know, it's hard to say. Because so many people
have been tortured in this case, including the witnesses that
the government has cut deals with preparing to testify against him.
There must be some evidence. The problem is, here's what

(09:31):
the prosecutors told the judge when they said, not only
can we not defend torture, but we're concerned about the
reaction around the world when the world learns what the
American government did to him, because once we introduce any
evidence involving or arguably derived from torture, he can then

(09:54):
put his psychiatrists on the stand, who will testify to
what the government did to them. They tortured him one
hundred and eighty three times that we know of. Some
of the records and most of the videotapes were destroyed
by the CIA, so it is difficult to say. This
is why you'd have to read the forty thousand pages
to decide which evidence was derived from torture and which

(10:19):
evidence was not. Well, and I know that that decision
has even been made yet by any of the four judges,
and it certainly hasn't been made by this new judge, who,
as far as I know, hasn't read the forty thousand
pages yet.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Well, And since College shig Muhammad as well as the
others are represented by counsel, I feel fairly confident by
them being willing to enter into this plea deal that
they do believe there is sufficient presentable evidence that their
client could get convicted, so this is a better deal.
Maybe that's why they made the recommendation, but we're all
left to speculate at this point. But in so far
as the other guys that were released under cover of darkness,

(10:52):
no charges ever brought against them, even after being incarcerated
twenty years. I would imagine they didn't have sufficient evidence
of criminality in those cases.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yes, yeah, you know, I've been harshly critical of George W. Bush,
and I'm unrelenting the whole concept of let's go to Cuba.
The federal laws don't apply, the Constitution doesn't amply, and
best of all, this pesky federal judges can interfere with you.
Five out of five cases the Supreme Court said no, no, no, no,

(11:22):
and no right. Federal laws apply, the Constitution applies, and
federal courts have jurisdiction. Oh, let's create our own system.
Military men will vote in favor of execution immediately, and
they won't be offended by torture. Well, and the one
jury trial, one jury trial that occurred there, the military

(11:43):
men on the jury were so repulsed by the torture
they voted unanimously to convict and then voted eight to
one for clemency. Well, well, that's the mess that Bushed
and company created. God forbid any of this should become

(12:06):
a precedent. Seven hundred and eighty prisoners. At its height
five hundred million dollars a year to operate. There's now
fifteen prisoners remaining and the thousand guards.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
My word, Judge Ennapolitana spelling it out like it is
got it's do we have.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
To start the new year with this?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Why not? You know, the topics haven't exactly been enlightening
or fun or uplifting and so far as the conversations
have been having during the week anyhow, so can you
continue with me? But you got to talk about it.
People need to be aware of this. It's extremely important
and I'm glad you have the bone, the wherewithal in
the backbone to bring this to the American people's attention.

(12:53):
It's important, all right, New year, new judging freedom. Who's
on today?

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Kyle LANs Alone, Aaron Monte, Phil Geraldi, the Secrets Sir,
the CIA agent who told George W. Bush personally in
the Oval office that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons
of mass instruction and Bush threw him out. And Professor
Jeffrey Sachs, a leading light of peace whose speech at

(13:20):
the Oxford Union in Great Britain shortly before Christmas was
just posted on truth social buy Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Donald Trump. Well, at least we got Trump to post
things like that, and we've got you to talk to
every Wednesday. Looking forward to next Wednesday. Already you're on
our best of health and thanks again.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Make sure Joe takes his bubble bath.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
I will definitely do that. Thank you, Joe, both of them.
It's National bubble bath Day. Who know, we'll all get
in the top. Take care man, we'll talk next Wednesday.
Best of health. It's eight forty six at fifty five
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