Fox News pulls Napolitano after his Trump wiretap claims

Fox News has reportedly pulled Andrew Napolitano from the air indefinitely after he claimed that a British intelligence agency wiretapped Trump Tower.

Napolitano, a Fox News analyst, is not scheduled to appear on the network in the near future, the Los Angeles Times reported, according to people familiar with the situation.

Last week, Napolitano made the claim that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was spying on Trump at former President Obama’s behest.

{mosads}White House press secretary Sean Spicer then quoted Napolitano’s remarks while defending the president’s claim earlier this month that the former president had Trump Tower under surveillance before the presidential election.

“Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, ‘Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command,’ ” Spicer said during a daily press briefing last week.

“‘He didn’t use the [National Security Agency]; he didn’t use the CIA. … He used GCHQ.’ “

GCHQ rejected Napolitano’s claim that it helped surveil Trump for Obama in 2016.

“Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then President Elect are nonsense,” said a spokesman for the agency, which rarely comments publicly on its operations.

The president last Friday praised Napolitano during a press conference as a “very talented legal mind.”

Fox News host Shepard Smith also denied Friday that his network has information validating Napolitano’s remark, saying the network knows of “no evidence of any kind that the now-President of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way.”