Fox News analyst calls Trump’s behavior ‘unlawful, defenseless and condemnable’ – Washington Examiner

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said Thursday that he thinks Attorney General William Barr is wrong on obstruction and called Trump’s actions as described in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report as “unlawful.”

Napolitano said in a Thursday op-ed for Fox News that he believed that Trump obstructed justice and that the reason why Mueller didn’t recommend an indictment was because he knew that Barr would block it given his personal thoughts on obstruction statutes.

“Barr’s view requires that the obstructer has done his obstructing in order to impede the investigation or prosecution of a crime that the obstructer himself has committed. Thus, in this narrow view, because Trump did not commit the crime of conspiracy with the Russians, it was legally impossible for Trump to have obstructed the FBI investigation of that crime,” Napolitano wrote.

He said that House Democrats would need to make a determination on whether to use the evidence of obstruction Mueller provided to impeach Trump, noting that impeachment historically succeeds when there is a “broad, national, bipartisan consensus behind it.”

Napolitano also knocked Trump in the op-ed, saying that the claims of obstruction are not morally defensible.

“The president’s job is to enforce federal law,” Napolitano said. “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.”

A redacted version of Mueller’s 448-page report was released last week. Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote a four-page summary of Mueller’s investigation last month that cleared Trump of both colluding with Russia and obstructing justice.