Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano fired off one of his sharpest critiques yet of President Donald Trump based on allegations outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
In a column on the Fox News website and in an accompanying video, Napolitano lit into Trump’s claim that he was exonerated by the Mueller report.
“Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump,” Napolitano wrote, and listed them:
“Why not charge him?” Napolitano asked in his video. “Because the attorney general of the United States would’ve blocked such a charge.”
Before the report’s release, Attorney General William Barr said last month that Trump did not obstruct justice based on the information Mueller’s team laid out in the report.
However, Napolitano said, Barr used an extremely narrow definition of obstruction that’s at odds with “the nearly universal view of law enforcement.”
Barr, he said, is wrong ― and added that obstruction as a crime is almost never completed and doesn’t have to be successful to lead to criminal charges. A redacted copy of Mueller’s report showed that reported attempts to hamper the Russia investigation were thwarted by aides who did not fulfill Trump’s requests.
Now, Napolitano said, it’s up to House Democrats to decide if they should impeach Trump ― but noted that they might be looking at how Republicans suffered politically during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
“I’m disappointed in the behavior of the president,” Napolitano said in his video. “His job is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States to uphold and enforce federal law. Not to violate it.”
He said if Trump violated the law to save a life, he could have a moral defense.
“But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable,” he wrote on the website.
Read his full column and watch the video here.