Fox News Judge Napolitano this morning: Trump's Ukraine call 'manifested both criminal and impeachable behavior'

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano is arguing that President Trump committed an impeachable offense during a July 25 phone call in which he pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son.

"That conversation manifested both criminal and impeachable behavior," Napolitano writes in a FoxNews.com column focused on a whistleblower complaint that accuses Trump of enlisting Ukraine's help in his 2020 re-election efforts.

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Napolitano goes on to assert that the "the criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller."

The column is accompanied by a web video where Napolitano summarizes the revelations from a White House memorandum of Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The White House issued the memo just a day before the public disclosure of the intelligence community whistleblower complaint.

Napolitano zeroes in on a portion of the White House readout in which Trump asks for a "favor" from Zelensky after the Ukrainian leader talks about the prospect of buying U.S. anti-tank missiles.

"He held up that aid and instead asked for a favor, which arguably was for his political campaign," Napolitano says. "That was a violation of federal law. That is an impeachable offense."

"In the Zelensky phone call, he told the Ukrainian president that he needed a personal 'favor,'" Napolitano writes in the column. "The clear unmistakable inference is that the $391 million in aid would be held up until the favor was delivered. The favor he sought was dirt on Biden."

[link to thehill.com (secure)]