You know just how damaging the Mueller report truly is for President Trump when Fox News‘ own legal analyst Andrew Napolitano admits that even the redacted version of the Special Counsel’s magnum opus contains sufficient evidence that it “might be enough to prosecute” the president.
The former New Jersey Superior Court judge and law professor expressed an opinion based on his reading of the Mueller report that is not often expressed over the airwaves of the president’s most reliable media cheerleader.
In a commentary during his Fox News series Judge Napolitano’s Chambers, the senior judicial analyst characterized the evidence uncovered by the Special Counsel’s team as dangerous for Trump and described the president with the sort of language that must have shocked the network’s audience of unrepentant Trump supporters with its damning adjectives.
“Depending on how you look at them, there might be enough to prosecute, but the attorney general has decided it’s not enough to prosecute,” Napolitano said in his commentary. “But it did show a venal, amoral, deceptive Donald Trump, instructing his aides to lie and willing to help them do so. That’s not good in the president of the United States.”
Frankly, outside of the world of crooked real estate developers, these are not qualities to be admired in any position of even modest power, much less in the U.S. president.
Napolitano also pointed out the lie behind Trump’s post-Mueller end-zone dance of tweets proclaiming “No Collusion! No Obstruction” by reminding the Fox News audience of what the Mueller report — as opposed to Attorney General William Barr’s whitewashed “summary” — actually says,
“On obstruction of justice … the president is not exactly cleared,” Napolitano noted, before outlining the “eleven instances” when Trump had tried to interfere with the Special Counsel’s investigation.
While in the past former judge Napolitano has been as reliable a Trump acolyte as his Fox News colleagues have been, in recent months he has been one of the few on the network willing to acknowledge the reality of the president’s troubles in the Mueller probe and how deeply they run.
As far back as last December, well before the details uncovered in the redacted version of the report released this past Thursday were known, Napolitano proposed a theory to Fox News anchor Shepard Smith that had Trump and his supporters shaking in their boots.
“There’s ample evidence … to indict the president,” Napolitano said. “The question is do they want to do it. The DOJ has three opinions on this. Two say you can’t indict a sitting president, one says you can but all three address the problem of what do you do when the statute of limitations is about to expire. All three agree in that circumstance you indict in secret, keep the indictment sealed and release it the day they get out of office.”
“So he may already be an indicted coconspirator?” Smith asked.
“That I don’t know about, but it could be, because we don’t know what’s been sealed,” Napolitano replied.
We also don’t know what’s behind those pesky redaction lines in the Special Counsel’s report and what he’s handed off to other jurisdictions because the issues didn’t fit within his narrowly defined mandate.
Hopefully, Judge Napolitano’s instincts will prove to be right, and President Trump will ultimately face accountability for his illegal actions. As Tom Petty once said, “the waiting is the hardest part.”
You can watch an excerpt of Judge Napolitano’s comments on the Mueller report in the video below.
AG Barr Releases the Mueller Report
Even though there is much for President Trump to rejoice over, there are still things he needs to be concerned about.
Judge Napolitano's Chambers#MuellerReport https://t.co/DZAyduUNr1— Judge Napolitano (@Judgenap) April 18, 2019
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Original reporting by Rachel Frazin at The Hill.
