Judge Andrew Napolitano said Tuesday he does believe a document leaked to The New York Times containing about four dozen questions special counsel Robert Mueller wants to ask President Donald Trump is real, and he suggested it was not Mueller's team that leaked the document.
"I was skeptical last night, until I read them again this morning," Napolitano told Fox News' "Fox & Friends."
"I think it's real. If this is true, this was given by Mueller to [Rudy] Giuliani and company, 'here are the questions we are going to ask your client.'"
Napolitano, the network's chief judicial analyst, said he would "suggest" that "it was not Mueller's people that leaked it," after one of the show's co-hosts, Steve Doocy, asked why the Trump team would leak it and another host, quickly interjected "we don't know that, though."
Napolitano said he also does not know why the questions would have been leaked, "unless it's to create an obligation on the part of the person who received the leak to do a favor for the leaker."
The questions, meanwhile, provide a "treasure trove into Bob Mueller's thinking," Napolitano said.
"It tells me a couple things," he commented. "It tells me they already know the answers to many of those questions. They can document the answers, and they want to see if the president will tell the truth."
Even a "so-called white lie" in the current environment have triggered indictments for former National Security Agency Director Michael Flynn, campaign aide George Papadopoulos and Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan, Napolitano pointed out.
The questions also reveal that Mueller wants Trump to talk to him as much as he did in an extensive interview with "Fox and Friends" last week, said the judge.
"The whole country was riveted," said Napolitano. "I was right there. I couldn't even go to my office upstairs because I was so riveted listening to him. They want him to talk like that. Because when he does that he reveals things pieces of the puzzle that they don’t know the answers to yet."
Napolitano also discussed the arrivals of an immigrant caravan at the Mexican border, and the legal implications.
"Once they knock on the door and say I'm a political refugee, I came from Honduras where my husband is being kept in jail because of political views, that triggers an obligation on the part of the American officials there to examine this," said the judge.
"That examination doesn't take five minutes. It takes five months. In the Obama administration. They just let you come back in five months. In the Trump administration they are going to keep you confined. . . There will be a mini trial before a judge to determine are you truly a political refugee. If yes, you get to stay if no they will send you out."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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