Last week, after nobody from the Trump Administration pointed to any evidence of President Trump’s claim that Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower to be wiretapped, Judge Andrew Napolitano took to Fox News to come public with some explosive information.
According to him, Obama got creative when it came to wiretapping Trump Tower, enlisting the help of the British. He said on the air:
“three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice… He used GCHQ. What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them and say ‘President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving Candidate Trump, conversations involving President-Elect Trump,’ [Obama’s] able to get it, and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”
Who were these three intelligence sources? Possibly people who wanted to sabotage Napolitano’s credibility, as his claims weren’t verified, and quickly denied by GCHQ. “Recent allegations made by media commentator judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” the statement read. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”
If it wasn’t for Donald Trump citing Napolitano’s theory during his meeting with Angela Merkel (in which he referred to Napolitano as a “very talented lawyer”), it’s unlikely they would’ve gotten much attention after the GCHQ’s response, but he did.
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After that, the theory attracted more scrutiny, culminating in a suspension of Napolitano from Fox.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano is being kept off the air indefinitely amid the controversy over his unverified claims that British intelligence wiretapped Trump Tower at the behest of former President Obama.
Fox News did not respond to inquiries about Napolitano’s status Monday. Napolitano was conspicuously missing from the network’s coverage of the confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch — an event in which he typically would have played a significant role. He has not been on the air since Thursday.
People familiar with the situation who could speak only on the condition of anonymity said Napolitano is not expected to be on Fox News Channel any time in the near future. Napolitano was not available for comment.
H/T The Los Angeles Times
Rather than bench Napolitano, Fox should ask who those three intelligence sources are. Napolitano made it sound like these are sources that Fox had relied on in the past. What changed this time? Is it just their word against the GCHQ’s, and Fox is siding with the British?
Even assuming Napolitano is in the wrong here, there are plenty of questions left unanswered.
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