Fox News analyst says the Trump Tower meeting could amount to criminal conspiracy
If President Trump watched his favorite morning show Tuesday, he was in for a rude surprise. Fox & Friends invited senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former judge, to weigh in on the 2016 meeting between the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Kremlin-linked attorney at Trump Tower.
Opposition research isn't against the law, Napolitano explained, but there are "federal statutes that prohibit receiving something of value from a foreign national, foreign entity, or foreign government." Whether "the purpose of this meeting was to receive something of value" will be up to Special Counsel Robert Mueller to determine, he said.
Crucially, Napolitano continued, the criminality of the meeting does not depend on whether anything of value was actually obtained: "So if there was an agreement to receive dirt on Hillary [Clinton], from the Russians, even if the dirt never came, if those who agreed, at least one of them, took some step in furtherance of the agreement, then there is the potential crime for conspiracy." In a tweet about the meeting Sunday, Trump emphasized that the arrangement with the Russian lawyer "went nowhere."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Watch Napolitano's comments in context below. Bonnie Kristian
Watch the latest video at href="http://www.foxnews.com">foxnews.com
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
Global court issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu
Speed Read The International Criminal Court issued warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who stand accused of war crimes
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Gaetz bows out, Trump pivots to Pam Bondi
Speed Read Gaetz withdrew from attorney generation consideration, making way for longtime Trump loyalist Pam Bondi
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
GOP's Mace seeks federal anti-trans bathroom ban
Speed Read Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has introduced legislation to ban transgender people from using federal facilities
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Ukraine fires ATACMS, Russia ups hybrid war
Speed Read Ukraine shot U.S.-provided long-range missiles and Russia threatened retaliation
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
New York DA floats 4-year Trump sentencing freeze
Speed Read President-elect Donald Trump's sentencing is on hold, and his lawyers are pushing to dismiss the case while he's in office
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Wyoming judge strikes down abortion, pill bans
Speed Read The judge said the laws — one of which was a first-in-the-nation prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy — violated the state's constitution
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
US sanctions Israeli West Bank settler group
Speed Read The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on Amana, Israel's largest settlement development organization
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Gaetz ethics report in limbo as sex allegations emerge
Speed Read A lawyer representing two women alleges that Matt Gaetz paid them for sex, and one witnessed him having sex with minor
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published