Benched Fox Analyst Is Back, and Doubling Down

Despite a weeklong suspension, a Fox News analyst is sticking to his story that former President Obama "went outside the chain of command" and used British intelligence to help wiretap Trump Tower. Legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, benched by Fox News after making the claim based on what he says sources told him, returned to the network Wednesday to defend it, reports CNN. "The American public needs to know more about this rather than less" in order to have "a great debate about how much authority we want the government to have to surveil us," he told Fox host Bill Hemmer, per the AP.

Fox News previously said it has no evidence to back up Napolitano's claim, which Trump has cited as proof that Obama spied on him. Neither does the FBI or Department of Justice, according to FBI Director James B. Comey. British intelligence have likewise blasted the report as "utterly ridiculous." Why Napolitano—a former New Jersey Superior Court judge who has been an analyst at Fox for nearly two decades—is now repeating an unsubstantiated claim that got him removed from the network is unclear, CNN points out. A Fox rep tells the Los Angeles Times only that the "matter was addressed internally." (More Andrew Napolitano stories.)