Trump flips on Fox News analyst after he calls president's actions 'criminal'

President Trump turned on Fox News personality Judge Andrew Napolitano after the legal analyst issued a sharp rebuke of the president’s actions outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report as “immoral, criminal, defenseless and condemnable.”

“Thank you to brilliant and highly respected attorney Alan Dershowitz for destroying the very dumb legal argument of ‘Judge’ Andrew Napolitano,” Trump tweeted Saturday night.

Dershowitz said on Fox News Saturday that he didn’t agree with Napolitano on whether Trump obstructed justice by interfering with the special counsel’s investigation. “It can’t be obstruction of justice if the president is acting within his authority,” he said when asked if Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey amounted to obstruction.

Trump blamed the former New Jersey Superior Court judge’s hostility on Trump’s refusal to nominate him to the U.S. Supreme Court, for which Napolitano was rumored to be on the shortlist at the start of Trump’s presidency.

President Donald Trump pauses while speaking at a rally at Resch Center Complex in Green Bay, Wis., Saturday, April 27, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
President Donald Trump pauses while speaking at a rally at Resch Center Complex in Green Bay, Wis., Saturday, April 27, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

“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.”

Trump’s attack on his often-quoted Fox News judge, who was once his favorite personality on the network, came after Napolitano criticized the president’s actions listed in the Mueller report, which he argued rose to the level of obstruction of justice.

“When the president asked 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 change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice. When he dangled a pardon in front of [ex-attorney] Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying, that’s obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said on his show last Wednesday.

“The president's job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense,” Napolitano also wrote in an op-ed published Friday by Fox News. “But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.”

Before the special counsel’s investigation ended and found no conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia — and came to no conclusion on obstruction — Trump had looked to Fox News and Napolitano’s legal analysis as vindication. But those times might be changing.

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