Soft Form of Obstruction of Justice

[KeithE]

It is now obvious that Donald Trump is guilty of a soft form of trying to influence an investigation. Harder forms would be destroying evidence or silencing those he could or even killing people who know too much. I do not know what the legal definition of Obstruction of Justice is but it is appalling that our President is doing soft versions of it.

It is at this point equivalent to what Nixon did that caused him to resign. We will have no such luck with Trump.

The underlying crimes of colluding with a foreign power to influence our election is still being investigated.

What is clear is that Trump shows no interest in getting to the bottom of the Russian meddling as you would think any US President would be harping on in every speech he makes.

All of the above is undeniable. One may like Trump's policies and hope that he survives, but as an American we all should demand the investigation of who is involved and how it can be mitigated in the future.

[Tim Bonney]

I think the President was obviously trying to effect the outcome of the investigation. The GOP is putting too much emphasis on the single word "hope" as if that gets him off the hook for pulling Comey into a private meeting and then encouraging him to drop the investigation. They are grasping at straws.

[Jim]

[William Thornton]

Losers on this mess:

Comey; his high water mark was before he released his opening statement. Now he is diminished by the leak, his failure to notify anyone, his failure to resign or offer to resign.
MSM: What? Those anonymous sources were false, sayeth Comey.
Loretta Lynch: Political hack is she?
Clintons: See above.
Trump: It cannot be a good day when your spokesfemale has to answer a question about lying.

[Sandy]

Comey's intention, with the "leak", was to put a trigger in place to generate an independent counsel. I'm not sure that wouldn't have been done anyway, eventually, with the evidence trails solidly establishing the involvement of at least five of Trump's campaign associates. But it did get that accomplished, and there's some question as to the status of the leak, considering he was a private citizen at the time, not the FBI director. It's not relevant to the investigation, nor a factor in the evidence for obstruction of justice.

His weakest moment, from my perspective, was his response to Senator Feinstein's question about why he didn't speak up. Admittedly, that's a tough one, which I can't imagine because I've never sat in front of the President of the United States, with my job in his hands while he was asking for my loyalty, and asking for an illegal favor at the same time. That's a life changing moment, regardless of what your answer might be.

For Comey, the whole election cycle was a lose-lose proposition. He was certainly under pressure from Republicans to find something they could use in the campaign, and when he didn't produce it, they railed on him. So he went to congress and gave them some words of comfort, though he couldn't or wouldn't alter the report that exonerated Clinton. And if you want a real contrast in integrity, with all of that swirling around Hillary during the campaign, President Obama, who could have fired him, didn't. There are many stark contrasts between the integrity of President Obama, and the corruption of Trump, and this is one of them.