Network source says Andrew Napolitano ditched after claiming UK spies might have aided Obama in alleged wiretapping

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Fox News has dropped a legal analyst who claimed British intelligence might have helped spy on Donald Trump during his bid to become US president.

Andrew Napolitano had been pulled from the channel, a source at Fox said. The network made no immediate comment on Monday.

Napolitano said last week on Fox & Friends he had three intelligence sources who said Obama went “outside the chain of command” to watch Trump.

Britain dismissed the report as “nonsense” after the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, quoted it in a briefing, part of the administration’s continued defence of Trump’s unproven contention that Obama wiretapped him at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The director of the FBI, James Comey, testifying before Congress on Monday, became the latest official to state that no evidence had been found to support Trump’s charge.

The US president, when asked about the incident, said that “all we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Fox’s Shepard Smith, on air on Friday afternoon, quickly distanced the network from Napolitano’s claim.

“Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way,” Smith said.

Napolitano is a senior judicial analyst who has worked at the Fox News channel since 1998, and frequently comments on the Fox Business Network. He was a New Jersey superior court judge from 1987 to 1995.

Napolitano’s removal from the air was first reported in the Los Angeles Times.