Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano on Friday called the evidence of impeachable behavior by Donald Trump presented at the House hearings “overwhelming” — and enough to justify three or four articles of impeachment against the president.
Despite that, Napolitano said he “can’t imagine [Trump] will be removed from office” by the Republican-controlled Senate after a trial.
“The evidence of his impeachable behavior at this point, in my view, is overwhelming,” he said in an interview on the libertarian Reason TV. Napolitano also noted that Trump “hasn’t presented a defense, and I don’t know if he plans to.”
Top of Napolitano’s list of articles of impeachment that he expects the Democrats to bring is bribery, referring to Trump’s withholding of nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid as he pressed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July phone call to launch an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son.
The Democrats will “argue that the president’s failure to disperse funds that the Congress ordered be dispersed until the recipient of the funds agreed to investigate a potential political opponent is an act of bribery,” Napolitano explained. “That is enough … to make it over the threshold of impeachable offenses. I don’t think it’s enough to convict of bribery, but it’s enough to allege it.”
The second charge will likely be “high crimes and misdemeanors — election law violation,” Napolitano noted. The third crime will be “obstruction of justice,” while the fourth could be “interference with a witness,” he said.
A fifth may be “lying under oath,” noted Napolitano. That would stem from Trump’s alleged lie under oath to special counsel Robert Mueller when he said he didn’t recall discussing WikiLeaks and hacked Democratic Party emails with Roger Stone. That contradicts testimony at Stone’s trial, in which Trump’s longtime friend and informer adviser was convicted of all seven charges levied against him, including lying to Congress and witness intimidation.
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