Fox News' Judge Napolitano: Mueller report shows Trump obstructed justice

Updated

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano is not going easy on President Trump.

In a scathing op-ed and accompanying video published Thursday, Napolitano said that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s efforts to cover it up showed a clear pattern of criminal behavior.

Andrew Napolitano
Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano. (Photo: Richard Drew/AP)

“When the president asks his former adviser and my former colleague K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter to the file knowing the government would subpoena it, that’s obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said in his video. “When the president asks Cory Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, to get Mueller fired, that’s obstruction of justice. When the president asks his then White House counsel to get Mueller fired and then lie about it, that’s obstruction of justice. When he asked Don McGahn to go back to the special counsel and then change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice. When he dangled the pardon in front of Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying against him, that’s obstruction of justice. Why not charge him?”

The House Judiciary Committee on Monday subpoenaed McGahn to testify on what he told Mueller about Trump’s orders to fire the special counsel. While Mueller made no determination on whether to recommend criminal charges against the president for obstruction of justice, Attorney General William Barr decided not to do so.

The White House has indicated that it will fight the subpoena that would compel McGahn to appear before the committee, and Trump tweeted Thursday that he would have been with in his legal rights to fire Mueller.

Napolitano, who once told friends that Trump had considered nominating him for the U.S. Supreme Court, took a very different view of the actions of the president described in the Mueller report.

“The president’s job is to enforce federal law,” Napolitano wrote. “If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

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