IT’S SOMETHING
Fox’s Judge Napolitano: ‘There Is Something There’ on Conspiracy in Mueller Report
‘There is something there, but it is not enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,’ the Fox News senior judicial analyst said Wednesday.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano warned Fox viewers Wednesday that the still-unseen report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely contains evidence pointing to conspiracy and obstruction that Democrats will be able to seize on over the coming months and into the 2020 presidential election.
Following the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report that states the special counsel did not find that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in its 2016 election interference, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) doubled down on his claim that Trump colluded with Russia.
“Undoubtedly there is collusion,” Schiff told The Washington Post, adding that he’ll continue to investigate whether the president was “compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power.”
Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Cavuto Coast to Coast Wednesday, Napolitano attempted to explain exactly where Schiff was coming from by getting inside his “head.”
“We saw on Sunday a four-page summary of a 700-page report,” the Fox analyst said. “The 700-page report is a summary of two million pages of documents, of raw evidence.”
He continued: “In the 700-page summary of the two million pages of raw evidence, there is undoubtedly some evidence of a conspiracy and some evidence of obstruction of justice, just not enough evidence—I’m thinking the way I believe Congressman Schiff is thinking—according to Attorney General Barr, not enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard.”
Napolitano went on to note that if “there were no evidence of conspiracy and no evidence of obstruction, the attorney general would have told us so,” adding that Barr didn’t, so “there is something there” that Democrats and Trump opponents want to see. And they’ll have a “field day” with it.
Host Neil Cavuto wondered that if Barr possibly characterized the Mueller report incorrectly or misleadingly, wouldn’t Mueller have issued a clarifying statement, prompting Napolitano to answer “yes and no.”
“On the conspiracy charge...Mueller, Rosenstein, Barr are on the same page,” the judge responded. “There is something there, but it is not enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He added: “On the obstruction charge, Mueller did what a lot of prosecutors do—they kick it upstairs. Let the boss decide this. The evidence is equivocal. There is evidence of obstruction. There is evidence of no obstruction. They’re equivocal.”
During an episode of his Fox Nation program earlier this week, Napolitano expressed a similar view, stating that Democrats will “quite properly” reason “there must be something there” in the Mueller report when it comes to obstruction of justice.