Obstruction of Justice

 

When AG William Barr released his summary of the Muller Report he revealed Muller had exonerated Trump on charges of Russian collusion but failed to reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice. Barr then took it upon himself to issue an opinion that the evidence doesn’t support criminal charges on obstruction of justice. There’s a lot to sort through here so I want to examine some of the issues surrounding the obstruction of justice allegations and the subsequent reports on the topic.

First, what is obstruction of justice and what is required to get a criminal conviction? According to Cornell Law School “someone obstructs justice when that person has a specific intent to obstruct or interfere with a judicial proceeding.” So, to get a conviction on obstruction of justice an individual must have intent to obstruct justice. I usually think of a mob boss threatening a witness as the classic obstruction of justice crime. In a case like that once you prove that the threat was made it’s not to difficult to show what the intent was, after all the act itself, making a credible threat to kill someone, is a crime in itself. However, in firing the director of the FBI and the Attorney General, President Trump was acting within his legal authority. It’s true both firings were unusual. The Director of the FBI is specifically a non-partisan position, that’s why it has a term of office that does not line up with Presidential elections, it’s intended that the Director will continue on even when the White House switches parties and in the past this is usually how it’s worked. The Attorney General does typically change with a change in the President, but they are still expected to be independent of the President and the firing of an Attorney General without any allegations of misconduct is highly unusual, but neither of these firings are necessarily illegal.

Ordinarily trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were fired to obstruct an on-going investigation would be nearly impossible, the President could simply claim a different reason for the firings and it would be difficult to prove otherwise. However, in this case Trump admitted on national television, in an interview with Lester Holt, that he fired Comey over the Russia investigation and not possible misconduct in his handling of the Clinton email investigation which was the official story devised by his advisors to give him a plausible reason for the firing. This came shortly after Comey testified to Congress that there was an investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. We later found out that Trump asked the directory of the FBI for his personal loyalty and suggested that he drop the investigation into Michael Flynn. This is all public information and shows beyond any doubt that the President attempted to use his position to thwart investigations into his actions.

As if that wasn’t enough, President Trump repeatedly attacked his hand-picked Attorney General Jew Sessions from the moment he recused himself from the Special Investigation into Russian collusion. He referred to Sessions as a traitor and at one point indicated he wanted an Attorney General that would protect him. That’s not the Attorney General’s job. Upon firing Sessions, he picked William Barr as the new Attorney General. Barr, who in his first stint as Attorney General under the 1st President Bush helped protect President Bush from the Iran-Contra scandal, wrote an unsolicited letter in 2018 indicating that he believed all of President Trump’s actions were fully within in his legal authority and that the obstruction of justice allegations were “misconceived.” It appears that in Barr, Trump got his protector that Sessions refused to be.

My last point concerns Barr’s decision to issue a ruling clearing the President of obstruction of justice. The administration is spinning Muller’s conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge as deferring to the AG on that point. This is political spin, not fact. It’s the consensus of the Justice Dept that a sitting President can not be indicted on criminal charges. So, whether the Muller Report supports criminal charges against the President is irrelevant because he can’t be charged with a crime until he’s no longer President. It’s the House of Representative that needs to see the full unredacted Muller Report in order to help them decide if the President should be impeached. It’s only after Trump is no longer President that the matter of criminal charges become relevant. We need the full report released to the House of Representatives and the fullest report possible released to the American people. Like Nixon said, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.”