Fox’s Judge Napolitano Tears Into Mueller for Not Indicting Trump: ‘No One Is Above the Law’

Fox’s Judge Napolitano Tears Into Mueller for Not Indicting Trump: ‘No One Is Above the Law’

Judge Andrew Napolitano thinks Robert Mueller made a mistake in not charging Donald Trump with obstruction of justice, the Fox News commentator said on Thursday.

In the latest edition of his online video series Judge Napolitano’s Chambers, Napolitano repeated Mueller’s contention in his farewell press conference that he could not prosecute Trump because of a Department of Justice opinion written in 2000 that, as Napolitano put it in an accompanying op-ed, “offered that charging a sitting president with a crime would impair his ability to perform his constitutional duties and thus ought not to be undertaken.”

There is a caveat to this, however:

But the 2000 opinion is just one of three that the DOJ has commissioned in the modern era. Of the three, two say the president ought not to be charged while in office, and one says that he may be charged. None says he cannot be charged.

Napolitano also pointed out that if prosecutors want to avoid impairing a president’s ability to do his job, they can charge him once he leaves office with crimes committed while in office. But by deciding now to not pursue an indictment, Mueller has put an end to Trump’s legal problems. At least where obstruction charges related to his impeding Mueller’s investigation are concerned.

This does not sit well with Napolitano, who intones that “if presidents can’t be prosecuted, then they are above the law. And we know a basic principle of American jurisprudence is that no one is above the law.”

The judge thinks that at least Democrats can now tee up impeachment of Trump over his crimes, and he has little doubt they will move in that direction. But as impeachment is a political process, he does not believe Democrats will pursue it without broad public support. And right now, public support is one element they sorely lack.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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