One day, law professors may use President Trump’s case in a law school exam: Find all the evidence of obstruction of justice. Diligent students will find a wealth of material, if news accounts are proven to be true: requesting a loyalty oath from then-FBI Director James B. Comey; pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions to remain in charge of the Russia investigation to protect Trump; leaning on Comey to let former national security adviser Michael Flynn off; firing Comey; cooking up a pretext for firing Comey; telling Lester Holt of NBC News that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation; falsely suggesting there were White House tapes so as to affect Comey’s testimony; threatening some kind of legal action against Comey for “leaking“; launching spurious conspiracy theories (unmasking, accusing Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower while he was president, smearing FBI officials who could be witnesses) to discredit the investigation; trying to get one of the potential FBI witnesses, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, fired; drafting a misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower; ordering that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III be fired; and publicly denying he ever considered firing Mueller. We’ve probably missed a few, but even a mediocre law student could get an A on that test.
What’s more, at least two Trump advisers likely think Trump obstructed justice.
- Legal team spokesman Mark Corallo reportedly quit after he concluded there was obstruction of justice in drafting on Air Force One the statement about the Trump Tower Russia meeting.
- Second, the White House counsel very likely made a legal judgment (not simply a political one) in refusing to help Trump fire Mueller.
.. What counsel would have wished to advise the Justice Department that Mueller’s fatal ‘conflict’ arose out of his unwillingness to remain a member of a Trump golf facility that had raised its fees?” In other words, once again a phony pretext was to be used to fire someone atop an investigation of the president.
.. the president does not enjoy an attorney-client privilegewith McGahn, unlike with his personal lawyers. McGahn works for the people, not Trump.)
.. They have refused to protect the special counsel legislatively from being fired. And they have completely suspended their own judgment as to whether Trump’s actions constitute an abuse of power — that is, an impeachable offense — relying on Mueller to make a legal judgment on possible criminal liability.
- .. If President Bill Clinton’s lie under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky (which was not the topic that independent counsel Kenneth Starr was originally charged with investigating) was grounds for impeachment, would a Trump lie under oath regarding any aspect of the Russia investigation, including potential acts of obstruction of justice, also be grounds?