Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said that there is “ample evidence” to indict President Donald Trump and added that he may already be secretly indicted.
Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen admitted Trump ordered him to break campaign finance laws by paying Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to stay quiet about alleged affairs they had with Trump. Cohen has since been sentenced to three years in prison for the campaign violations as well as fraud and false statement charges.
Napolitano told Fox host Shep Smith Monday that, “There's ample evidence — this doesn't require too much analysis — to indict the president.”
"The question is, do they want to do it?” he explained. “The DOJ has three opinions on this: Two say you can't indict a sitting president, one says you can. But all three address the problem of, what do you do when the statute of limitations is about to expire? All three agree in that circumstance you indict in secret, keep the indictment sealed and release it the day he gets out of office. You can't let a person go scot-free because they happen to be in the White House."
Smith asked Napolitano whether he thinks Trump has already been under a sealed indictment.
"That I don't know about, but he could be, because we don't know what's been sealed,” he replied.
Napolitano shreds Fox Trump defense:
The judge, who had frequently been quoted on Trump’s Twitter feed but is certainly no longer, has repeatedly batted down Fox News’ defense of Trump when his associates have convicted.
Last week, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy insisted that Trump denied telling Cohen to break the law and the payments weren’t illegal.
“I understand the president’s argument,” Napolitano replied. “Unfortunately, the court and the prosecutors who work for the president disagree with him.”
“A very, very telling statement came out of the judge’s mouth yesterday ... and that was about the president,” he explained. “The judge finding that the president ordered and paid for Michael Cohen to commit a crime. That is very telling.”
“If you do this as part of a scheme, to try to hide it, then it’s not a civil wrong, then it’s a crime. That’s what the judge found yesterday,” he added.
In another appearance on Fox Business, Napolitano shot down host Maria Bartiromo’s claim that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was “entrapped” by investigators into lying.
“Though they trapped him, it is not entrapment,” Napolitano shot back. “Entrapment is when you resist, you resist, you resist—and they push and they push and they push."
“The Supreme Court has written that the feds, police, prosecutors can lie, cheat, deceive, threaten and coerce to flip a witness or to get information from a witness,” he added. “Here’s the thing: his guilty plea was given under oath. If (Flynn) retracts that, it’s perjury. So he’s really in a bind right now.”
