If Donald Trump weren’t president of the United States, he would have been charged with obstruction of justice, nearly 400 former federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials said Monday in
an extraordinary public letter.
The joint statement, which had 379 signers by early afternoon, rebuts Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that the evidence of potential obstruction uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.
“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the statement reads.
at least 10 episodes of efforts by Trump to obstruct the federal probe that the statement says satisfies all of the elements for an obstruction charge: “conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming.”
They include “the President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort; the President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and the President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.”
“Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here,” the former prosecutors add. “But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice ... runs counter to logic and our experience.”
Trump has falsely claimed that the special counsel’s investigation exonerated him on both collusion and obstruction.
