Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said it’s possible former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is innocent and was forced to plead guilty to lying to federal agents for reasons other than guilt.

“I’ve never heard of this. So Mike Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI in December. The judge before whom he pleads guilty takes himself off the case. Why? Because that judge is also on the FISA court. And he may, he may very well have authorized the wiretap that surveilled Mike Flynn when he was talking to then Ambassador Kislyak, which is the alleged lie that he told the FBI about,” Napaolitano said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” “So Mike Flynn pleads guilty. A new judge comes in. It’s time for sentencing. Bob Mueller says we don’t want to sentence him until May. That’s normal.”

“Then the judge on his own, not in response to any application from General Flynn’s lawyers says, ‘By the way, I want all exculpatory evidence, evidence that could help Flynn or hurt the government turned over,'” Napolitano continued. “Why would he we want that after General Flynn has already pleaded guilty? That is unheard of. He must suspect a defect in the guilty plea. Meaning, he must have reason to believe that General Flynn pleaded guilty for some reason other than guilt. Do people plead guilty for a reason other than guilt?”

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“Unfortunately yes,” he added.

Napolitano said it’s common for defendants to feel suffocated by the legal and financial restraints of a trial, causing them to make deals with the government to bring the case to a close.

“I don’t want to have to mortgage my house again to pay my legal fees. So give me something to plead guilty to so that this can be over with,” Napolitano said. “So now the question arises, was he guilty? Did he lie to the FBI? Did the FBI agents who interviewed him, one of them was Peter Strzok, actually believed that he lied or did they say we don’t see anything wrong, but senior management said wow, we do. We think it was a lie.”

“If it was a faulty guilty plea — If the government accepted the guilty plea knowing he wasn’t guilty, the lawyers involved have a very serious problem,” Napolitano concluded.

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