Donald Trump is likely to be charged with a crime he previously called for others to be executed over, according to right-wing pundit Andrew Napolitano.
The former judge says the Justice Department could reasonably prosecute the former president with three crimes connected to the confidential documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago.
“Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it,” Mr Napolitano explained in an op-ed published in the New Jersey Herald.
Mr Trump has previously called for the likes of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden to face execution for those crimes.
“In a monumental irony, both Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalist who exposed American war crimes during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency employee who exposed criminal mass government surveillance upon the American public, stand charged with the very same crimes that are likely to be brought against Mr Trump,” Mr Napolitano wrote.
“On both Mr Assange and Mr Snowden, Mr Trump argued that they should be executed. Fortunately for all three, these statutes do not provide for capital punishment.”
Mr Napolitano added that Mr Trump had little defence against the charges that could be brought against him.
“Under the law, it doesn’t matter if the documents on which NDI is contained are classified or not, as it is simply and always criminal to have NDI in a non-federal facility, to have those without security clearances move it from one place to another, and to keep it from the feds when they are seeking it,” he wrote.
“Stated differently, the absence of classification — for whatever reason — is not a defence to the charges that are likely to be filed against Mr Trump.”
And he blamed the one-term president for seemingly admitting possession of the documents when he claimed he had already declassified them.
“He committed a mortal sin in the criminal defense world by denying something for which he had not been accused,” he said.
