Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano on Thursday predicted that President Trump will testify on behalf of himself at an impeachment trial in the Senate, saying it would be “the most dramatic legal political event” in modern history.
“If you go to a Senate trial, who testifies on behalf of the president?” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer asked Napolitano on the network’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“Himself,” Napolitano quickly responded.
“You believe that could happen?” Hemmer pressed.
“I do,” replied Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge. “I think it will be the most dramatic legal political event in the history of our era.”
“With the president of the United States testifying under oath in front of the chief justice, and the full Senate and 200 million people watching on television.”
Napolitano has said on several occasions in recent weeks that he believes the president
should be impeached based on evidence laid out as part of the House inquiry, which is examining Trump’s efforts this year to get Ukraine to launch politically charged investigations.
In a recent interview with Reason.com, Napolitano said he believes there could be “three or four articles of impeachment” against Trump, including bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors and obstruction of justice.
“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,” he told Reason’s Nick Gillespie.
“One is bribery. The allegation is the technical definition of bribery is the failure to perform an official duty until a thing of value comes your way,” continued Napolitano. “And they will argue that the president’s failure to disperse funds that the Congress ordered, they dispersed until the recipient of the funds agreed to investigate a potential political opponent is an act of bribery. That is enough, in my opinion, to make it over the threshold of impeachable offenses. I don’t think it’s enough to convict of bribery, but it’s enough to allege it for the purpose of impeachment.”
“The second charge will be high crimes and misdemeanors, election law violation,” he added. “The third crime will be obstruction of justice. The fourth will be interference with a witness, and the fifth may be lying under oath.”
“The evidence of his impeachable behavior at this point, in my view, is overwhelming,” Napolitano concluded.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday
announced that Democrats would move forward with crafting articles of impeachment against Trump.
Should the Democratic-led House vote to impeach Trump, it should shift the process to the Senate, where GOP leaders have predicted that the president will be acquitted.
Trump has not dismissed the possibility of testifying on his own behalf in a Senate trial, while regularly calling the ongoing House impeachment proceedings a “witch hunt” and “a hoax.”
In a flurry of tweets on Thursday morning, the president also said he’d like Pelosi, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden and the former vice president’s son Hunter Biden to testify at a Senate trial.
“The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy,” Trump tweeted.
“Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business. We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is. I was elected to ‘Clean the Swamp,’ and that’s what I am doing!” he added.
