Andrew Peter Napolitano[1] (born June 6, 1950) is an American retired jurist and syndicated columnist whose work appears in numerous publications, including The Washington Times and Reason.

He is a libertarian and has gained prominence in part due to his criticism of the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

in history from Princeton University in 1972 after completing a senior thesis titled "An Essay on the Origin and Evolution of Representative Government in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1630–1644.

He hosted a daily libertarian talk show called Freedom Watch that aired on Fox Business Channel.

[14][15] During his 24-year tenure as Fox News' Senior Judicial Analyst, Napolitano appeared on air more than 14,500 times,[16][17] a record for any on-air personality at the network.

"[19] He reasons that while a woman has a natural and undeniable right to privacy in her personal choices, the rule of necessity causes the right to life of the fetus, which he believes to begin at conception, to take priority for the duration of gestation.

With respect to both presidents Bush and Obama and their handling of civil liberties in the War on Terror, Napolitano is a strong critic.

At the same time, he also argued that states, where slavery was legal, did not secede out of fear of abolitionism, asserting that "largely the impetus for secession was tariffs," which most Civil War historians dispute.

[22] In his book Suicide Pact, he focused his criticism of Lincoln on the precedent set by his specific constitutional violations, such as his unilateral suspension of the right to habeas corpus and his institutionalization of military commission systems for civilian crimes.

He finds such limitations too restrictive on a judge's ability to apply the natural law to decide cases where the individual's liberty is at stake.

[29] In September 2015, Napolitano was the featured speaker at a conference held by the Republican government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

[30] On March 16, 2017, citing three unnamed intelligence sources, Napolitano said on the program Fox & Friends that Britain's top intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had engaged in covert electronic surveillance of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign on orders from President Obama.

"[31] One of his sources was former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Larry C. Johnson, who later told CNN that Napolitano had misrepresented the statements he made on an online discussion board.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader in Britain, said, "Trump is compromising the vital UK–US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment.

The communications were obtained through "incidental collection" as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets, not from a targeted operation against Trump or his campaign.

[40][41] Fox News distanced itself from Napolitano's claims and suspended him from contributing to the network's output, according to the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.

[45] Napolitano argued that Lincoln could have solved the slavery question by paying slaveholders to release their slaves, a method known as compensated emancipation, thereby avoiding war.

[44] He also asserted that Lincoln attempted to arm slaves, but two prominent historians of the Civil War said they had never heard of such an effort and PolitiFact rated the claim "pants-on-fire".

[44][46] He has asserted that slavery was dying a natural death at the time of the Civil War, a claim that Eric Foner on the Daily Show panel rejected.

PolitiFact notes that "while there were cases when Lincoln enforced the law during the Civil War, he did so selectively when he thought it would help keep border states in the Union fold.

[44] Napolitano splits his time living in Manhattan and Newton, New Jersey, where he owns a farm that produces maple syrup.