Fox News has indefinitely benched its senior judicial analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, after President Donald Trump cited the judge’s claims that President Barack Obama used British intelligence sources to wiretap Trump’s campaign phones, according to sources.
Judge Napolitano has been among the missing during Fox News’s coverage of the confirmation process for Judge Neil Gorsuch, an event for which he should be a primary source of commentary, the L.A. Times notes. Napolitano has been off the air since March 16.
Neither Fox nor Judge Napolitano commented on the situation, but the Times says insiders have confirmed the defacto suspension.
Last week, Napolitano raised eyebrows with claims that Obama employed the British to monitor Trump. The Fox News judicial analyst stated on Fox & Friends on March 14 that “three intelligence sources” say President Obama asked British spy agency GCHQ to obtain transcripts of conversations involving President Trump.
President Trump later pointed to the Fox News analyst’s claims as evidence that Obama tapped his phones, saying people should “ask Fox,” not him, about the claims.
Fox News has not substantiated Napolitano’s claim, and on March 17, Fox host Shepard Smith even denounced the claims that British intelligence agencies tapped Trump’s phones.
The questions have arisen due to charges by Democrats that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to get Trump elected to the White House, but despite months of investigations by the FBI, as FBI Director James Comey’s testimony revealed, there is no proof that there was any such interference.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.