Read the full transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano and award-winning journalist Aaron Maté on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “Aaron Maté: Russiagate Docs Released?” premiered April 2, 2025.
Introduction
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 2, 2025. Aaron Maté joins us now. Aaron, a pleasure. My dear friend. I want to talk to you about something that you have done a tremendous amount of research on which as you know is the so-called Russiagate documents and when they’re going to come out and what you expect. But before that, I want to pick your brains on a couple of other things. How do you account or do you have an opinion on the recent bellicosity of the language of Prime Minister Starmer, European Commission President von der Leyen, the French President Macron? I mean, this is almost farcical, isn’t it?
European Leaders and Ukraine
AARON MATÉ: It is farcical. But they’re grappling with the fact that there’s now a chief proxy war sponsor in Washington and Donald Trump who’s no longer willing to play along with this whole ruse that the NATO alliance is in Ukraine for as long as it takes. Trump is pulling the plug on that and accordingly he’s showing Europe their place. They were always subordinates in this proxy war coalition. Yes, they provided some weaponry to Ukraine, but as a recent New York Times front page article underscores, it was the US running the show the entire time to the point where from a US Military base in Germany, US Commanders were choosing the targets for Ukraine to hit and helping them directly hit them. I’m talking about Russian targets inside of Ukraine.
And the way they got out of this semantically, this is one of a few interesting revelations in this article. The way they got out of it semantically is rather than calling Russian targets “targets,” they called them “points of interest.” So that way technically they can say no, we’re not helping Ukraine select targets simply by changing the word from targets to points.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, this is Orwell on steroids. They can call it what they want, but this is the United States of America targeting Russian assets, which means military equipment and human beings and causing human beings to be killed by American equipment, the triggers on which were fired either by Americans or Ukrainians.
AARON MATÉ: We have been directly at war with Russia using Ukrainians as the bullet stoppers. Short of sending our own troops, we’ve been at war with Russia and this New York Times article underscores that. It also reveals that it was the US that helped plan all these counteroffensives. This idea that we were just following Ukraine’s lead. All that is put to the side in this article. It was the US devising all these plans, plans from the start. And amazingly they still in the article the Times US Sources throw Ukraine under the bus. The reason they say why all this failed is not because we did anything wrong. It’s because Ukrainians didn’t follow the plan to our specification. So it’s incredibly cynical.
NATO’s Pledges to Ukraine
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s a bellicose Secretary General of NATO boasting about what he says the EU has given to Ukraine, I don’t know if this number is true, 20 billion. But boasting about what he says the EU has given to Ukraine.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: NATO allies continue our support to Ukraine in the first three months of this year. Allies have already pledged more than 20 billion euros in security assistance for 2025.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Pledged.
AARON MATÉ: Exactly, Judge, pledged not delivered.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Okay, I didn’t catch that.
AARON MATÉ: That’s the key word. It’s pledged. There was a recent article in the New York Times about how Europe is struggling to find its identity now that Trump is pulling the plug on the proxy war. And there’s a quote from some European leader who says, yes, we’re the coalition of the willing, but willing to do what? They don’t even know. They call themselves the coalition of the willing, but they don’t know what they’re willing to do because they can’t do anything. It’s the US running the show all along. And if the US pulls away, it looks like Trump is doing, then Europe’s role is finished.
Trump’s Ukraine Policy
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Has Trump pulled the plug? Aren’t we still sending massive amounts back from a prior Congress that authorized it and obviously a prior president signed it? But isn’t the pipeline still open? The Joe Biden pipeline?
AARON MATÉ: The pipeline is still open. And as long as it is, Ukraine will keep fighting. But when it runs out, and it will run out, then what is Trump going to do? Is Trump really going to go before Congress and ask for tens of billions of dollars additional funding for this proxy war that he campaigned against? Look, it’s possible he campaigned as the anti-war candidate. He campaigned against bombing Yemen, now he’s bombing Yemen on behalf of Israel. So anything is possible. But on this issue, given that you’ve seen from Trump and his top principles so much criticism of this war, saying it never should have started blaming Biden, I just don’t see Trump backing down on this one as much as he’s been two-faced about war on this.
Yemen Situation
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: One, I think I’ll stick to his guns on Yemen. Pepe Escobar says that the Yemenis determination to continue to do their best to prevent Israeli shipping is undiminished. That the vast majority of what Hegseth and his colleagues have attacked and destroyed has been civilian infrastructure. The people killed have been civilians. There’s no groundswell for war in the United States against Yemen.
We’ve been bombing Yemen since George W. Bush was in the White House in 2002. It doesn’t seem to have had any effect. Where is this going? Does this just enable Donald Trump to say, hey, Bibi, look what we did for you lately?
AARON MATÉ: I think that’s exactly what it is. The US has been aiding and abetting a war on Yemen for a very long time. Last month was the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama authorizing a Saudi bombardment of Yemen in which the US played an integral role under both Obama and then Trump in his first term, and then Biden once again. So that policy hasn’t dislodged Ansar Allah, the Houthis. And I don’t see why Trump is any different, except, as Pepe Escobar pointed out, killing lots of civilians and, as we know, happened in that strike that Mike Walt was so giddy about in the Signal chat.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The Signal chat. Excuse me. In the Signal chat, there was not a single syllable about the morality or lawfulness of doing this. It was only the process. In fact, if you read the whole thing, if you read what the Vice President said, you wonder if Trump even knew they were having this chat.
Trump’s Foreign Policy Contradictions
AARON MATÉ: That’s true. You know, J.D. Vance alluded to the fact that Trump might not even understand what the bombing of Yemen is about, and J.D. Vance was opposing it. But J.D. Vance couldn’t even articulate why the U.S. was bombing Yemen, which was on behalf of Israel. J.D. Vance said this was for Europe, even though this has nothing to do with Europe. This is on behalf of Israel because the Houthis, Ansar Allah, were intervening against ships in a bid to pressure Israel to respect the ceasefire and stop imposing a starvation siege on Gaza. That’s why Trump is bombing Yemen. And it’s funny that J.D. Vance, the one opponent of this or critic of this, couldn’t even articulate why Trump was doing it.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I wonder, Pepe Escobar wonders if the ships at Diego Garcia are there to attack Iran or attack Yemen.
AARON MATÉ: Well, that’s a great question. And Trump has been increasingly belligerent in his rhetoric. He’s been directly threatening Iran. What did he tell NBC News the other day? That if Iran doesn’t abandon its nuclear program and make a deal, then there will be bombing that like we’ve never seen before. And he’s also blaming Iran for the actions of Ansar Allah, even though, as far as I know, Ansar Allah, the Houthis act pretty autonomously, not at Iran’s direction. So Trump is forgetting that he campaigned against war. He promised to restore peace to the Middle East. As we can see in the ongoing destruction of Gaza and his bombing of Yemen, he’s doing the exact opposite, at least in that region of the world.
State Department Rhetoric on Iran
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Just want to find a tape here that I want to run for you. Bear with me for a minute. Oh, here’s the. You’ll get a kick out of this. The State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce was worse than Matt Miller. At least Miller looked you in the eye when he talked to you. He didn’t read off of an iPad. Here she is yesterday about Iran, or it’s actually three days ago.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Iran’s behavior across the globe threatens US national interests, which is why President Trump reimposed the maximum pressure campaign designed to end Iran’s nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop it from supporting terrorist groups. As the President has said Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. He has also been very clear that the United States can’t allow that to occur. The president expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran. As we know, if the Iranian regime does not want a deal, the president is clear he will pursue other options, which will be very bad for Iran.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Am bored to tears watching her read like that. How do the journalists perceive her as being credible when all she does is read something somebody else wrote?
Trump Administration’s Middle East Policy
AARON MATÉ: It’s a great question. There was such relief seeing the end of the Biden administration after so much just malicious lying for so long in defense of Israel and so much just disingenuous rhetoric coming from the aforementioned Matt Miller. But now what does the Trump administration do? It’s Matt Miller but even with less of an effort to even appear fair-minded. You know, the Biden administration pretended to care about Palestinian rights and about international law. Now everything is all just Iran, Hamas, everything is Hamas’ fault. And it’s all just the Israeli talking points 100%.
Whereas with Biden administration, sometimes they would say we’re going to pressure Israel to comply. Now the administration just basically reads Israel’s scripts. They don’t even bother to pretend that they are any different than the Israeli government in terms of policy. Now perhaps that’s refreshing. At least they’re more honest up there in their brazen support for Israel. But from a moral point of view and from the point of view of people who thought that maybe Trump represented America first, not Israel first, it’s disappointing.
Gaza and Humanitarian Crisis
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Talking about that, I sense no outrage domestically or internationally to reports of The IDF executing 15 UN aid workers, one after another after another. Civilians unarmed, murdered, execution style. Why is there no outrage? Is there so much death that doesn’t phase anymore?
AARON MATÉ: That’s what it is. This genocide has become normalized. Israel’s carried out some of the worst crimes in human history before our eyes and with our support. And because our media does such a good job covering up for it and whitewashing the atrocities, it’s become normal now. It’s become normal to wake up every day and see countless images of dead Palestinian children on your screen as if that’s a routine occurrence, like the weather. And so atrocities that would otherwise attract singular attention – the execution of Palestinian medics found in horrific conditions – now it just seems like routine. That’s the reality we’re living with. The way I try to deal with it is, listen, that there have been horrific atrocities in human history. Horrific, horrific crimes, horrific outbursts of collective insanity like the Nazi holocaust. And this is just one that we’re living through right now. We’re all here for it.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: So the Israeli Defense Minister, whose name is Israel Katz, announced that the IDF would be capturing more territory in Gaza. And the spokesperson for the family of the hostages said, oh, you’re trading our family members for land. Does that resonate with Netanyahu or not?
AARON MATÉ: Well, he doesn’t care about the hostage families, obviously. He could have gotten all of them released long ago, even before his forces entered Gaza, when Hamas offered to release everybody if Israel promised not to do an invasion. And there have been many more opportunities since. He doesn’t care. He just doesn’t care. His goal, as he’s made clear, is to force as many Palestinians as possible to leave. He just basically touted Trump’s plan, which is ethnic cleansing, and that’s what he’s pursuing now. He is taking every opportunity he can to destroy as much of Gaza as possible and to force as many people as possible to leave.
Russiagate Documents
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Tell us what you expect the Russiagate documents, if they’re revealed to show. And did Trump order the Cash Patel FBI to reveal the documents from the Jim Comey years? Is that what we’re expecting?
Trump’s Declassification Order and Russiagate Documents
AARON MATÉ: Trump just signed a new declassification order, but the order is limited. It covers a so-called binder of documents that he tried to have released at the very end of his first term, but then mysteriously pulled back on. Now, what I know about this binder, it’s low hanging fruit. There’s a lot of material about the FBI’s reliance on the Steele Dossier which is the collection of Hillary Clinton funded conspiracy theories and also messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were two FBI officials prominent in the Trump Russia probe who were very biased against Trump. But we know all this already. We know that the collusion aspect of Russiagate was a complete scam.
The part that still endures and that elements of the intelligence community are still endorsing is that Russia waged the sweeping interference campaign to brainwash Americans into not voting for Hillary and installing Trump. And I know for a fact that there are documents inside the government that call this into question. The House Intelligence Committee, back when it was led by Devin Nunes and Kash Patel, who was working for Devin Nunes, conducted their own review of this really important report that came out right before Trump took office the first time.
This so-called intelligence community assessment overseen by John Brennan and James Clapper, who were prominent in the Russiagate fraud. And Nunes’ Committee did a review of this and they found significant failings and were very critical, including on the core allegation that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. I know that that’s in there. That’s never been released.
When Trump tried to release it in his first term, officials like William Barr threw a fit because they didn’t want to embarrass the CIA and the FBI and they didn’t want to undermine this core allegation that was used not only to taint Trump’s presidency by saying it was the product of Russian interference, but also that was used to drum up tensions with Russia.
This led to Russian diplomats being expelled. This led to constant fear mongering about Russia interfering on our pristine democracy. And that just as much as the collusion aspect was a complete scam as well, we know already from the available evidence that the FBI was relying on CrowdStrike, which was another Clinton campaign contractor. Just as the FBI was relying on Christopher Steele for its collusion investigation, it was also relying on CrowdStrike for its Russian hacking allegation.
And you know, as Ray McGovern has tirelessly pointed out, what did CrowdStrike admit when its president had to testify under oath to Congress? He admitted, “Oh yeah, we have no evidence of Russian hacking.” And that revelation was buried throughout the entirety of the Mueller probe. So on this core allegation of so-called Russian interference and Russian hacking, which in my opinion is just as much of a scam as the collusion aspect, we’re still missing critical evidence that could be released from declassified documents. But so far Trump is not moving on declassifying, as far as I know.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: All right, so what you’re talking about are intelligence community documents, not FBI documents.
AARON MATÉ: Well, the FBI certainly has this information as well. They’re sitting on stuff that I think would be interesting, but it goes beyond the FBI because again, the CIA was involved in this. The CIA was involved in a domestic interference operation, framing a president for being a Russian agent and accusing Russia basically of waging a sweeping interference campaign.
And John Brennan, the former Director of the CIA was all over it and so was his counterpart at the office of Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. And their predecessors have continued covering up for them. We still have not gotten a thorough review of what they did to the point where John Durham, who was authorized to conduct a sweeping review of all of this, he totally ignored the Russian hacking allegation because it was too big to fail. It was like Iraq WMDs. It was so important to this narrative needed to fear monger about Russia that even John Durham, who was authorized to go there, didn’t even go there.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: As I recall, Durham did little more than prosecute a low level lawyer in the FBI, I think his name was Kevin Klein Smith.
AARON MATÉ: Correct.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: For tinkering with an affidavit that had been submitted to the FISA court. I mean, think about Trump. Trump hates, you know what it’s like when he hates somebody. Trump hates, hates Clapper and Brennan, he stripped their lifetime security clearances. Why doesn’t he just tell Gabbard and Ratcliffe release this stuff, stop sitting on it?
The “Too Big to Fail” Intelligence Officials
AARON MATÉ: The problem is John Brennan is the former director of the CIA. He knows a lot. And you don’t mess with someone like that, you just don’t. I just think that’s part of the problem here. These people are too big to fail. Even though he personally targeted and helped frame a president for treason, essentially for conspiring with Russia, John Brennan was all over it. He’s still hard to touch.
That’s why, you know, when John Durham interviewed John Brennan as part of his probe, the first thing he told him was, “John, don’t worry, John Brennan, you’re not under investigation here. You just, we want to talk to you.” That’s why when they interviewed Hillary Clinton, also another powerful person, they treated her with kid gloves.
And that’s why when Jim Comey said to John Durham, “Yeah, I’m not going to talk to you, I don’t want to talk to you.” Did John Durham go and get a subpoena, as Robert Mueller did so many times for people who didn’t want to talk to him? No, because again, James Comey was just too big to fail, too big to touch, and he was able to defy John Durham.
For real accountability, yes, it’s going to have to come from the top. It’s going to have to come from Trump saying this was a scam. The American people deserve to know that they were lied to about all of this. Not just on collusion, but also on so-called Russian interference. And we can achieve that by declassifying documents that are already there. This House intelligence report from 2017 that I talked about earlier, it’s sitting under lock and key at the CIA. That’s how sensitive it is. There are some powerful things to be released.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Was this written by Devin Nunes and Kash Patel?
AARON MATÉ: Correct. And I’ve interviewed Kash Patel about this before and what he told me was that he tried to have this released at the end of Trump’s first term and Trump was going to do it, but then top officials, including William Barr, intervened and blocked it.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What do you expect these documents to show?
AARON MATÉ: Well, what I’m most curious about. Again, for years, it’s funny to think about it now because it seems so trivial, but for years this was the top story in the country, that Russia was waging this sweeping and systematic interference campaign in our democracy to sow division, create chaos. And everyone took this seriously. The media, rather than saying, “What is your evidence for this?” They just wrote it down as fact.
And I know for a fact the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes looked at this and was critical and pointed out that there were some significant problems with this conclusion. That again, under John Brennan’s direction, the intelligence community came to. This was a John Brennan product. This is not an intelligence community product. In fact, John Brennan sidelined key intelligence officials, hand picked a few people to basically say what he wanted to say, which was that Russia was responsible for putting Trump in the White House and waged the sweeping interference campaign.
So I expect actually the factual basis for that conclusion, that very important conclusion to be scrutinized. And that’s what these documents that could come out would do if we ever are allowed to see them.
The Latest on Kursk
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Let me switch gears before we end. Here’s the latest on Kursk. That’s the area of Russia that was invaded by the Ukrainians from which they’ve largely been expelled. Cut number two.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The government continues to support the residents of the Kursk region. A whole range of measures are being taken to help them, including monthly payments as per the President’s instructions. Today, we will additionally allocate about 16 billion rubles for those who have lost their homes. Affected citizens will be able to use these funds to purchase or build new houses and apartments. We hope that these resources will help families solve this problem and most importantly, return to normal life.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is that fighting still going on?
AARON MATÉ: It is. It is still going on. There’s still some Ukrainian forces there, but Russia has mostly won that battle, as was widely predicted. I mean, on this show we talked about this a lot, right? This incursion into Kursk was launched, I believe, in August. And what was happening then, that was right after the NATO summit, where once again, Zelenskyy was disappointed because he was not given NATO membership.
That was something Biden dangled in front of his face to get him to keep fighting Russia and to get Russia to keep fighting Ukraine. But then when the time came for a pledge, Biden said, forget it, you’re not ready. And so Zelenskyy, I think, launched this operation in Kursk to stay relevant, to change the narrative, to show something that could justify continued proxy war funding.
And there was a lot of excitement about this at first. You know, we got the standard articles in places like the New York Times saying that this is an audacious operation, that Russia was taken by total surprise and was going to be pushed back. But inevitably, as was always the case throughout this war, Russia, because of its sheer size and power, was always going to push this back.
And for Ukraine, it caused a double problem because they had to divert forces from the Donbas front, which is the most important front from Russia’s perspective, to go fight in Kursk. And they sent forces into Kursk that had been specifically trained to fight in Donbas to help repel Russian forces there.
So you ended up tying up Russia a little bit in Kursk, but also meanwhile weakening Ukraine in the Donbas. And that’s why we’ve seen increasing Russian advances there. So this was yet another failure by Zelensky, all because he just wanted to stay relevant and justify continued proxy war funding that keeps him afloat.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Aaron Maté, thank you, my dear friend. Thanks for your time and for your analysis. Safe travels. We’ll see you again next week.
AARON MATÉ: Thank you, Judge.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Of course, all the best. Coming up at 3:00 today, Phil Giraldi. And at 4:15, the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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