Right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt’s latest made interesting reading when he stated why he believes Trump is a shoe-in for re-election in WaPo:
Last week’s message from a booming economy should have rocked the Democratic field. Alas, the party seems collectively intent on poring over the Mueller report yet again in the hope that, somehow, someway, there’s something there. But the probe is over. No collusion. No obstruction. Democrats have to campaign on something else besides a great economy, rising values of savings, low unemployment across every demographic, clarity about allies and enemies abroad, and a rebuilding military. It’s a tough needle to thread, condemning everything about Trump except all that he has accomplished that President Barack Obama couldn’t or wouldn’t. Not just tough — it’s practically impossible.
Bold mine. The interest doesn’t come so much in its content, though, as it is in contrast to other evaluations. So what is to be made of Fox News‘ senior judicial analyst, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano’s analysis of the redacted Mueller Report? Here’s what he has to say, via the Fox News website:
Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump — from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn’s chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counse lDon McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI’s investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.
The essence of obstruction is deception or diversion — to prevent the government from finding the truth. To Mueller, the issue was not if Trump committed crimes of obstruction. Rather, it was if Trump could be charged successfully with those crimes.
Mueller knew that Barr would block an indictment of Trump because Barr has a personal view of obstruction at odds with the statute itself. Barr’s view requires that the obstructer has done his obstructing in order to impede the investigation or prosecution of a crime that the obstructer himself has committed. Thus, in this narrow view, because Trump did not commit the crime of conspiracy with the Russians, it was legally impossible for Trump to have obstructed the FBI investigation of that crime.
The nearly universal view of law enforcement, however, is that the obstruction statute prohibits all attempted self-serving interference with government investigations or proceedings.
As an independent voter, to my mind it is significant when a prominent partisan personality does not follow the party line on a major issue; it’s even better when such a personality has relevant experience and expertise, and uses it to produce what appears to be an honest evaluation of a document of paramount importance. These are the writings which catch my attention as possibly highly informative. Napolitano is unequivocal in his conclusions, while off-handedly condemning Attorney General Barr for not even reaching the low standard set by former AG Jeff Sessions.
Hewitt? He appears to be writing merely for his right-wing paycheck, keeping his masters happy with whatever pablum is necessary to push the Party line. It’s exceptionally difficult to take seriously the communications of someone who can seriously misread a report from which many observers, partisan or neutral, have found serious evidence for obstruction of justice. Who knows what else he’s misinterpreting to the satisfaction of his masters?
I must admit I rarely read Hewitt, but the title of his article (“The 2020 election isn’t going to be close”) was too good a hook to ignore. Too bad there was nothing to it to take seriously.
