WATCH: Comey’s Written Testimony ‘Establishes Obstruction of Justice by Trump’ Says CNN Legal Analyst

‘Comey’s Statement Establishes Obstruction of Justice by Trump. Period.’

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin says the just-released written testimony of Jim Comey “establishes obstruction of justice.” 

Earlier Wednesday afternoon the Senate Intelligence Committee published former FBI Director Jim Comey’s prepared written testimony, a seven-page staggeringly detailed statement that all but indicts President Donald Trump.

“Let’s just keep this in perspective,” Toobin said on CNN. “There is a criminal investigation going on of one of the President’s top associates, his former National Security Advisor,” Toobin says, speaking of Mike Flynn.

“He gets fired. He’s under criminal investigation and the President brings in the FBI Director and says, ‘Please stop your investigation.’ If that isn’t obstruction of justice, I don’t know what is,” Toobin said forcefully.

Toobin continues: “What makes this so deeply sinister, is the Mike Flynn stuff.”

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who Trump fired a few months ago after promising him he would be able to keep his job, just posted this to Twitter:

Finally, Lawfare Blog’s Benjamin Wittes calls the Comey written testimony, “the most shocking single document compiled about the official conduct of the public duties of any President since the release of the Watergate tapes.” He points out an “effort on the part of the President to engage his FBI director in a relationship of patronage,” and states: “Comey is describing here conduct that a society committed to the rule of law simply cannot accept in a president.”

Wittes adds, “this document is about a far more important question to the preservation of liberty in a society based on legal norms and rules: the abuse of the core functions of the presidency. It’s about whether we can trust the President—not the President in the abstract, but the particular embodiment of the presidency in the person of Donald J. Trump—to supervise the law enforcement apparatus of the United States in fashion consistent with his oath of office. I challenge anyone to read this document and come away with a confidently affirmative answer to that question.”

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