Judge Napolitano says Trump attacked him 'to divert attention' from Mueller report

David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Updated

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, who calls himself a friend of Donald Trump, says he is untroubled by the fallout from his call for the president to be charged with obstruction of justice.

Trump called it a “very dumb legal argument” by Napolitano, a former judge on the New Jersey Superior Court.

Days after Napolitano laid out his case that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 presidential election demonstrated that Trump had obstructed justice in trying to end the investigation multiple times, the president went after him on Twitter.

“Look, I thought the president's comments were brilliant,” Napolitano said Monday in an interview with Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.” “He wanted to divert attention from what Mueller had said about him and what I had commented about Mueller to his relationship with me, his relationship with me is not the story.”

Asked by the host, longtime Trump defender Maria Bartiromo, whether he had indeed asked Trump to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Napolitano denied it.

“No. He and I spoke for about three hours and two 90-minute meetings — this is when he was the president-elect — about the type of person that should replace Justice Scalia. And in the process of my describing that person and the person I was describing was then Judge Neil Gorsuch, he looked to me and said, ‘Sounds like you're describing yourself.’ I said, ‘No, no I'm not describing myself, I'm describing Neil Gorsuch because you have this list of people from which you want to choose and Judge Gorsuch is the person that I think most of your advisers are going to point to.’ This was early on in the process. So he said, ‘All right, give me, give me a spiel as to why I should put you on.’ Who would turn that down? I gave him the spiel, so to speak, and somebody else in the room said, ‘You know, that's pretty interesting, the judge is a little long in the tooth; to which the president said, ‘[blank] you … I'm four years older than the judge and I'm about to become president.’ It was that kind of a conversation.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano waits for an elevator in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Dec. 15, 2016. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Judge Andrew Napolitano waits for an elevator in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City on Dec. 15, 2016. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

On Trump’s claim that he had sought a pardon for a friend, Napolitano again said he had a different recollection of events.

“You know the pardon that he and I discussed is of a mutual friend of his and mine, and he asked me to tell me [him] what the person was convicted of and if I thought the conviction was just,” Napolitano said. “I described what the person was convicted of. I described that it was just, the president used a very strong term to condemn the conviction, and he said, ‘You know this person as well as I do, call this person up and tell him, tell this person he's going to be on the list of pardons that I will seriously consider.’ That was the extent of that conversation.”

Although Napolitano said that, despite the discord, he would likely remain friends with the president, he also marveled at the accusations Trump had leveled.

“This is way you treat your friends, how do you treat your enemies? Oh boy,” Napolitano said.

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