EDITOR:

On August 22, you ran an opinion piece that began: “Former President Donald Trump will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury.” The writer, Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and a FOX News commentator, described the former President as “the victim of a federal government that knows no bounds and has assumed powers nowhere granted in the Constitution.” The judge also said that the FBI, CIA, DEA, NSA, and DIA “regularly break the written and moral laws, and are themselves far more dangerous to human freedom than the folks they pursue.”

At the same time, Judge Napolitano made the startling claim that “nearly all federal criminal laws — including those now confronting Trump — are wildly unconstitutional.” Does that mean that nearly all persons convicted of federal crimes have been wrongfully imprisoned and should be released?

According to Judge Napolitano, “the Constitution only authorizes the feds to enact criminal statutes in two areas — criminalizing treason and debasement of the money supply.” He failed to acknowledge the federal government’s constitutional authority to regulate commerce (by criminalizing human and drug trafficking), to establish naturalization policies (and criminalize illegal entry) to create a postal service (and criminalize mail fraud), etc. With regard to the government’s investigation of former President Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House, Judge Napolitano noted that a portion of those documents were returned to the National Archives and that when a grand jury subpoenaed records that were still missing, Trump’s lawyer falsely told the FBI that no more documents remained at Mar-A-Lago. The judge accurately described the due process safeguards that assured that the warrant authorizing the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort was issued in strict compliance with the law. He then offered this startling conclusion:

“After four years as president fighting the security state, Trump should know that the federal government is a monster that can only be tamed, occasionally by a fair jury, or permanently when it collapses of its own weight. The latter will happen sooner rather than later. But not soon enough to help Donald Trump.”

Judge Napolitano’s inflammatory remarks are particularly egregious because they were penned by a former member of the judiciary who should know the law and respect those who administer and enforce it. If taken seriously, his remarks can only exacerbate the harm inflicted upon our democracy by the extremism of a former President and his allies.

Nino E Green, Escanaba