Judge Napolitano - Killing the Constitution at Gitmo - podcast episode cover

Judge Napolitano - Killing the Constitution at Gitmo

Jan 08, 202515 min
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Transcript

Speaker 1

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

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. 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 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

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

How about this? Some thing's never changed it?

Speaker 1

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

Yes, yes, it does seem that way.

Speaker 1

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 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 ones that were subject to that plea deal they pulled the plug on last minute?

Speaker 3

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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. 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. 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 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

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

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 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 on Judge number five.

Speaker 1

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

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

And see that's what I was.

Speaker 3

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

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 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 death penalty.

Speaker 3

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 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 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 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

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, 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

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, 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 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 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

My word, Judge Ennapolitana spelling it out like it is got it's do we have.

Speaker 3

To start the new year with this?

Speaker 2

Yeah?

Speaker 1

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. It's important, all right, New year, new judging freedom. Who's on today?

Speaker 3

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 the Oxford Union in Great Britain shortly before Christmas was just posted on truth social buy Donald Trump.

Speaker 1

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

Make sure Joe takes his bubble bath.

Speaker 1

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 kre see the talk station. Jimmy care. Fireplace is stove? Have it checked out? Your fireplace needs to be checked out once a year is the wise thing to do.

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