Fox News Host Uses Tom Brady ‘Deflategate’ Ruling to Attack Hillary Clinton

Somehow a Monday afternoon Fox News segment about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension turned into an indictment of Hillary Clinton.

During the network's daytime talk show Outnumbered, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivered his legal assessment of the situation—in which a federal appeals court ruled Brady will have to serve the previously overturned suspension in relation to the “Deflategate” scandal—when co-host Andrea Tantaros chimed in with her own unique take.

“It sounds familiar,” Tantaros said of Brady’s decision to destroy a cell phone that may or may not have contained incriminating evidence.

“Yes it does! The server in Chappaquiddick,” Napolitano said, laughing, before correcting himself. Clinton’s private email server was reportedly kept in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.; not the infamous Massachusetts island.

“Brady and Belichick are like the Bill and Hillary of football,” Tantaros remarked. “I mean, deleting the evidence.” Previously, when reporters asked Clinton if she “wiped” her servers, she responded, "What, like with a cloth or something?"

Remarkably, this is not the first time conservatives have attempted to paint Brady and Clinton with the same tainted brush. Columns in the Weekly Standard and Breitbart.com accused the media of holding NFL players to a higher standard than public officials like the current Democratic presidential frontrunner.

Speaking to a Boston-based radio host last summer, former GOP presidential candidate—and possible Ted Cruz running mate—Carly Fiorina joked, "Maybe Tom Brady learned how to wipe his phone clean by watching Hillary Clinton wipe her server clean. I mean, hey, if the secretary of state can just wipe out all relevant information on an investigation involving her, maybe Tom Brady decided, 'I can just wipe out all the text messages as an investigation swirls about me?'"

Similarly, Donald Trump made such an analogy by way of defending his one-time supporter Brady. “They had no definitive proof against Tom Brady or #patriots,” Trump tweeted one month before he officially launched his presidential campaign. “If Hillary doesn't have to produce Emails, why should Tom? Very unfair!”

Despite the new ruling, Trump was still standing up for the quarterback at a campaign rally earlier today. In fact, he opened his remarks with this declaration: “Leave Tom Brady alone!"