Fox News Judicial Analyst Lays Out Four Articles Of Impeachment Against Trump
Lance Perriman
Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with Reason that Democrats have uncovered enough evidence in the House's ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump is enough "to justify about four articles of impeachment" against him over his dealings with Ukraine.
"The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have unearthed enough evidence, in my opinion, to justify about three or four articles of impeachment against the president, Napolitano told Reason's Nick Gillespie before adding: "Here's what I think they will advance, one is bribery. … The technical definition of bribery is the failure to perform an official duty until a thing of value comes your way."
Napolitano stated he thinks House Democrats will introduce the charge based on what he called Trump's "failure" to disperse U.S. military aid to the Ukraine earlier this year. House Democrats have accused Trump of withholding the assistance in order to obtain political favors.
"They 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 said.
"That is enough, in my opinion, to make it over the threshold of impeachable offenses. I don't think it's enough to convict [Trump] of bribery, but it's enough to allege it for the purpose of impeachment," he continued.
The second charge, Napolitano predicted, would be that of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and "election law violation."
"The third crime will be obstruction of justice. The fourth will be interference with a witness," he went on, adding that the "the fifth may be lying under oath."
Napolitano pointed to recent reports that Democrats are looking at Trump's potential obstruction of former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe to suggest the fifth charge.
"The last article of impeachment that I believe they're contemplating, it's the same one with which they charged President Nixon and President Clinton, and that is obstruction of Congress by refusing to permit officials of the executive branch to testify and refusing to permit those officials to have access to their own documents," Napolitano said.
Napolitano added that "the president cannot interfere with the investigation of himself without risking this charge" because "the House can write its own rules and because those rules say that a committee has subpoena power."
This week, the House Judiciary Committee is set to hold its first hearing in the investigation to determine whether evidence that has been collected so far in the inquiry warrants bringing forward articles of impeachment against Trump.
In this article:Andrew Napolitano, Impeachment inquiry