It’s no secret that Fox News legal analyst and former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano has turned his back on President Donald Trump. Once one of the president’s most ardent defenders, Napolitano has turned to demonizing Trump, most recently calling him “immoral,” “criminal,” and “defenseless.”
But Trump shed some light on the judge’s sudden about-face in a series of Saturday tweets, accusing Napolitano of becoming “very hostile” after the president turned him down for a job on the Supreme Court.
Exposed!
“Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile!” Trump wrote.
….Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile! Also asked for pardon for his friend. A good “pal” of low ratings Shepard Smith.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2019
The president began by thanking Harvard Law School professor and lifelong Democrat Alan Dershowitz for “destroying the very dumb legal argument of ‘Judge’ Andrew Napolitano,” who argued that Trump should be prosecuted because he sought to “interfere with government functions.”
“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,” the former judge said on his Fox Nation show, Judge Napolitano’s Chambers. “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.”
As far back as December 2017, however, Dershowitz has disputed Napolitano’s obstruction argument. “There’s never been a case in history where a president has been charged with obstruction of justice for merely exercising his constitutional authority. That would cause a constitutional crisis in the United States,” Dershowitz said over a year ago on Fox & Friends.
Television turncoat
Napolitano used to be in Trump’s camp, as well, when it came to the special counsel’s Russia investigation. He was temporarily suspended from Fox News in March 2017 after he made the then-controversial allegation that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump.
Of course, Napolitano is notorious for promoting crackpot conspiracy theories. He appeared on fake news connoisseur Alex Jones’s radio show in 2010 to claim that the government was hiding something regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “It couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us,” he told Jones.
Despite these theories, Napolitano apparently believed he was on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist. He met with Trump twice during the transition, and began telling friends, “Trump said I’m on the list,” according to a source.
According to a March 2017 Politico report, the judge’s associates warned him not to take Trump’s overtures too seriously. “He’ll take your call and invite you to the Oval Office, but he just wants you to say nice things about him on TV,” the unnamed source says he told Napolitano.
When Napolitano wasn’t on the list of nominees to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the Fox News contributor continued to hold out hope that he was a “sleeper candidate,” telling his skeptical friends that he had sent resumés to the Oval Office and that the president’s aides were reviewing his popular non-fiction books.
After Trump selected Neil Gorsuch as his first SCOTUS pick, Napolitano continued to hold out hope, telling a colleague that Trump promised him his next Supreme Court nomination “if I get another one.” But as it has become increasingly clear that this would never happen, Napolitano has changed his tune about Trump.
First, he began laying out the case that Trump was guilty of obstruction. “Obstruction of justice is a crime no matter who commits it, if done for a corrupt purpose,” he said in December 2017. “It’s also an impeachable offense,” he added.
After Trump selected Brett Kavanaugh as the second Supreme Court pick, Napolitano called him “the heart and soul of the D.C. establishment against whom the president railed.” He predictably sided with Democrats in their partisan attempt to smear Kavanaugh as a sex offender, and even after the week-long FBI investigation that effectively cleared the Supreme Court nominee, Napolitano insisted that “they have to keep digging.”
Fair and balanced
Even now, after the attorney general has cleared Trump of any wrongdoing, and everyone but the fiercest anti-Trump liberals has let go of the Russiagate charade, Napolitano continues to hammer away with baseless and legally defunct arguments.
Given his rejection at the hands of Trump, is it any surprise that Napolitano should be one of the president’s most vocal critics? The former superior court judge has been outed in the grandest fashion, but don’t expect Democrats to stop holding Napolitano up as an impartial analyst when it comes to the president’s legal troubles.
Once dismissed as a conspiracist, Napolitano is quickly becoming the left’s most trustworthy source. Welcome to the age of Trump.
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