Andrew P. Napolitano

Donald Trump criminal investigation could hinge on FBI ‘target’

I was surprised last weekend when one of President Trump's lawyers told my colleague Chris Wallace twice on "Fox News Sunday" that the president is being investigated by the FBI and then told him twice that he is not. This same lawyer repeated the "not being investigated" argument on a half-dozen other Sunday shows but did not repeat the "is being investigated" remark. Published June 21, 2017

Government works for the people

Last week, when former FBI Director James Comey gave his long-awaited public testimony about his apparently rough-and-tumble relationship with President Trump, he painted a bleak picture. The essence of Mr. Comey's testimony was that the president asked him to drop an investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn -- Mr. Trump's former national security adviser -- and then asked him to do so in return for keeping his job as FBI director and then fired him for not obeying his order. Published June 14, 2017

Russia hack details should be known to public

Last weekend, the FBI arrested an employee of a corporation in Augusta, Ga., that had a contract with the National Security Agency (NSA) and charged her with espionage. Espionage occurs when someone who has been entrusted to safeguard state secrets fails to do so. In this case, the government alleges that the person to whom state secrets had been entrusted is 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, who had a top-secret national security clearance. Published June 7, 2017

Domestic spying makes mockery of the Constitution

After the Watergate era had ended and Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the Senate's Church Committee had attempted to grasp the full extent of lawless government surveillance in America during the LBJ and Nixon years, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA declared that it provided the sole source for federal surveillance in America for intelligence purposes. Published May 31, 2017

Donald Trump may fall to obstruction of justice

The bad news for President Trump keeps coming his way, notwithstanding a generally bravura performance on the foreign stage this past week in Riyadh, Jerusalem and Vatican City. Yet while he is overseas, his colleagues here in the United States have been advising him to hire criminal defense counsel, and he has apparently begun that process. Can the president be charged with obstructing justice when he asks that federal investigations of his friends be shut down? Published May 24, 2017

Rogue intelligence agents trigger crisis for Trump

In a period of seven days this month, President Trump fired James Comey as director of the FBI and was accused of sharing top-secret intelligence data with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States, the latter a known Russian spy. Published May 17, 2017

Repeal and replace Obamacare progress slowed

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives crafted a partisan compromise bill that endorsed and reinforced the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. This was done notwithstanding claims to the contrary by President Trump and the House Republican leadership, who want us to believe that this bill, if it becomes law, will effectively repeal and replace Obamacare. Published May 10, 2017

Domestic spying revelation shows NSA lied

Late last week, President Trump told CBS News that domestic surveillance of American citizens should be the "No. 1" topic of inquiry until we can find out "what the hell is going on" with it. Also late last week, the National Security Agency (NSA) -- the federal government's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying agency -- announced that it would voluntarily hold back on its more aggressive uses of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Published May 3, 2017

Hillary Clinton under FBI scrutiny again

Last weekend, The New York Times published a long piece about the effect the FBI had on the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. As we all know, Donald Trump won a comfortable victory in the Electoral College while falling about 3 million votes behind Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. Published April 26, 2017

Self-government could be an illusion

What if our belief in self-government is a belief in a myth? What if the election of one political party over the other to control Congress changes only appearances? Published April 19, 2017

Syria airstrikes was illogical move for Trump

The history of the world is the history of violence. I had planned to write this column about the most critical act of violence in human history and its superhuman aftermath -- the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Published April 12, 2017

Government spying on citizenry a hole in the Constitution

The issue of federal government surveillance of Americans has largely occupied Washington politicians and the media since President Trump first accused his predecessor's administration of spying on him while he and his colleagues worked at Trump Tower in New York City during the presidential election campaign and during the presidential transition. Published April 5, 2017

Health care must be labeled for what it is

The political fiasco that unfolded last week as President Trump and the Republican House leadership failed to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, is attributable as much to the failure of politics as it is to the failure of politicians to understand the constitutional role of the federal government. Published March 29, 2017

Neil Gorsuch judged by politicians

I have spent this past week watching the Senate Judiciary Committee interrogating U.S. Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch. Judge Gorsuch is President Trump's nominee to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Published March 22, 2017

The president doesn’t need a warrant to order surveillance on any American

The question of whether former President Obama actually spied on President Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition has been tantalizing Washington since President Trump first made the allegation nearly two weeks ago. Published March 15, 2017

Privacy surrendered in the name of security

Those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says have been arguing since the late 1970s that congressional efforts to strengthen national security by weakening personal liberty are unconstitutional, un-American and ineffective. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which Congress passed in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's use of the CIA and the FBI to spy on his political opponents, has unleashed demons that now seem beyond the government's control and are more pervasive than anything Nixon could have dreamed of. Published March 8, 2017

Leaks to press may harm Trump

Last week, President Trump erupted with fury over a series of public revelations of private facts -- some top-secret and some office gossip -- that painted him and his White House in a bad light. The president ordered the FBI to investigate some of these so-called leaks and his own White House counsel to investigate others. Published March 1, 2017

Privacy traded away for security in America

Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community -- part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections -- now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States. Published February 22, 2017

Donald Trump as president superior for foreign policy

Over the past weekend, Trump administration officials offered harsh criticisms of the judicial interference with the enforcement of the president's immigration order. The Jan. 27 order suspended the immigration privileges of all refugees from Syria indefinitely and all immigrants from seven designated countries for 90 days. Published February 15, 2017

Trump and the courts have uneasy relationship

Last week, in a public courtroom in the federal courthouse in Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota -- after suing President Trump, alleging injury caused by his executive order that suspended the immigration of all people from seven foreign countries -- asked a federal judge to compel the president and all those who work for him to cease enforcing the order immediately. Published February 8, 2017