Fox News’ Napolitano Criticizes DOJ Involvement in Trump Defamation Lawsuit: I’m ‘Disappointed and Shocked’
Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano criticized the Department of Justice for getting involved in President Donald Trump’s defense in the defamation lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, who has accused the president of rape.
Napolitano spoke with Fox News Radio’s Jimmy Failla on Fox Across America Wednesday about the surprise move by the DOJ, and he told Failla, “I don’t think the law is a fan of it and I’d be quite surprised if the federal courts will be a part of these games that the DOJ is playing… This has never been used before for a personal private lawsuit.”
“What the DOJ’s effectively done, by asking a federal judge to substitute the federal government of the United States as the defendant for Donald J. Trump in his private capacity, would be to bar the lawsuit, because if the federal government is the defendant, the federal government is not capable of defaming anybody,” he continued. “So effectively the lawsuit would go away. Well, that can’t happen because the court in New York has already decided it’s a viable lawsuit.”
Napolitano said that Attorney General Bill Barr is “becoming the Roy Cohn that Donald Trump has been looking for to get him out of legal problems that he created on his own.”
He said he’s “disappointed and shocked that the DOJ would be used for something like this,” and added, “I don’t know what interaction he had with this woman, and I don’t know if the statement he made is defamatory, but a jury will decide those things and Trump will pay his own legal bills in a just world rather than having a taxpayer pay for them.”
Napolitano also talked about his fluctuating relationship with the president and proposals for national mask mandates during the pandemic. You can listen to the interview above, via Fox News Radio.
