Andrew P. Napolitano

The values underlying Independence Day

The Declaration of Independence — which was signed on July 3, 1776, for public release on July 4 — was Thomas Jefferson's masterpiece. Jefferson himself wrote much about the declaration in the 50 years that followed.

July 4, 2018

Can immigrants be deported without a trial?

Last weekend, President Trump argued that those foreigners who enter the United States unlawfully should simply be taken to the border, escorted across it and let go. According to the president, this would save precious government resources, avoid the business of separating children from their parents and free up the Border Patrol and other federal assets to do their jobs.

June 27, 2018

How to keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation independent

When President Donald Trump appointed Atlanta lawyer Christopher Wray to succeed James Comey as the director of the FBI, my initial reaction was not positive. Mr. Wray is a veteran of the Department of Justice and is part of that good-old-boy DOJ network that knows how to protect its own. Indeed, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney, needed a good criminal defense lawyer — whose millions in fees were paid by New Jersey taxpayers — he hired Mr. Wray.

June 20, 2018

The House Intelligence Committee interferes with the investigation of the president

Amid all the happy hoopla over President Donald Trump's trip to Singapore, where he began the process for what he hopes will be the normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, has come an effort by the House Intelligence Committee to interfere with the criminal investigation of the president.

June 13, 2018

Rudy Giuliani’s hypothetical question deepens Donald Trump’s legal woes

Last weekend, the White House leaked a copy of a letter sent by President Donald Trump's legal team on Jan. 29 to special counsel Robert Mueller. The letter set forth the president's legal strategy, arguing essentially that he is immune from prosecution for any crime.

June 6, 2018

Rudy Giuliani’s unwarranted attack on the Trump investigation

This past weekend, President Trump and the most visible member of his legal team, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, fired up their campaign against special counsel Robert Mueller. They attacked people at the Department of Justice (DOJ) whom Mr. Trump appointed. They smeared career DOJ lawyers and FBI agents by offering allegations without showing any supporting evidence. And they purported to challenge the legitimacy of Mr. Mueller's office itself.

May 30, 2018

If Mueller actually has something on Trump, intervention could look like obstruction

This past weekend, President Trump suggested that his presidential campaign may have been the victim of spies or moles who were FBI informants or undercover agents. He demanded an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.

May 23, 2018

Supreme Court strikes down the 1992 federal law that banned commercial sports betting

In 1992, Congress passed a statute authored by Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who was a former Princeton University and New York Knicks basketball superstar, prohibiting the states from authorizing sports betting. At that time, gambling in Atlantic City was flourishing, and notwithstanding one of its own senators' efforts to keep gambling away from competitive sports, the state of New Jersey wanted to duplicate Las Vegas' success with sports betting.

May 16, 2018

Prosecutors and the rule of law

Late last week, a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., questioned the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller to seek an indictment and pursue the prosecution of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for alleged financial crimes that, according to the indictment, began and ended well before Donald Trump ran for president.

May 9, 2018

Troublesome questions for President Trump

In a startling revelation earlier this week, The New York Times published what it claims are 40 questions that special counsel Robert Mueller sent to lawyers for President Donald Trump. The questions are apparently a road map of inquiry that Mr. Mueller and his prosecutors and FBI agents plan to put to the president if the president agrees to sit down for an interview with them.

May 2, 2018

At war and with the separation of powers

A popular way to begin the first day of class in constitutional law in many American law schools is to ask the students what sets the U.S. Constitution apart from all others.

April 25, 2018

Trump and the attorney-client privilege

A few weeks ago, President Trump was an outwardly happy man because of the utterance of one solitary word from the lips of special counsel Robert Mueller to one of Mr. Trump's lawyers. The word that thrilled the president and his legal team was "subject."

April 18, 2018

The real threat to Trump

In the midst of worrying about North Korea, Syria and Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives this fall, President Donald Trump is now worrying about a government assault on his own business, which targeted his own lawyer.

April 11, 2018

What is Robert Mueller looking for?

Robert Mueller is the special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 to probe the nature and extent of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The investigation began in October 2016 under President Barack Obama when the FBI took seriously the boast of Carter Page, one of candidate Donald Trump's foreign policy advisers, that he had worked for the Kremlin.

April 4, 2018

The meaning of Easter is that if there’s hope for the dead, there’s hope for the living

What is the connection between personal freedom and rising from the dead?

March 28, 2018

Purpose of the Constitution is to restrain government, FISA has done exactly the opposite

For the past few days, the nation's media and political class have been fixated on the firing of the No. 2 person in the FBI, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

March 21, 2018

What Stormy Daniels has to say, sordid as it may be, must not be subject to government censorship

When James Madison drafted the First Amendment — "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" -- he made sure to use the article "the" in front of the word "freedom." What seemed normal to him and superfluous to moderns was actually a profound signal that has resonated for 227 years. The signal was that because the freedom of speech existed before the government that was formed to protect it came into existence, it does not have its origins in government.

March 14, 2018

‘Let him arrest me!’

Late Monday afternoon, we were treated to a series of bizarre interviews on nearly every major cable television channel except Fox when a colorful character named Sam Nunberg, a former personal and political aide to Donald Trump, took to the airwaves to denounce a grand jury subpoena he received compelling the production of documents and live testimony.

March 7, 2018

When the government disarms in selected zones it increases helplessness

The Ash Wednesday massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, seems to have broken more hearts than similar tragedies that preceded it. It was no more senseless than other American school shootings, but there is something about the innocence and bravery and eloquence of the youthful survivors that has touched the souls of Americans deeply.

February 28, 2018

Robert Mueller in hot pursuit

Last Friday, a federal grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C., indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian corporations for conspiracy and for using false instruments and computer hacking so as to influence the American presidential election in 2016. The indictment alleges a vast, organized and professional effort, funded by tens of millions of dollars, whereby Russian spies passed themselves off as Americans on the internet, on the telephone and even in person here in the U.S. to sow discord about Hillary Clinton and thereby assist in the election of Donald Trump.

February 21, 2018