Bharara: Substantial Evidence of Obstruction of Justice Exists

Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (August 13, 2009 – March 11, 2017), said, "There's substantial evidence of obstruction of justice."

I thought so, though I'm not an attorney. I thought I saw Pres. Trump obstruct justice on TV when he told NBC anchor Lester Holt that he fired then FBI director James Comey "because of the Russia thing."

James Comey himself, when Lester Holt asked him, said he thought at the time that the president was obstructing the Russian investigation by firing him.

I never expected special prosecutor Robert Mueller to equivocate on whether Trump obstructed justice or not. I never expected him to leave that decision up to a clearly biased Attorney General selected by Trump, in all likelihood, because he was biased. William Barr, current U.S. Attorney General, wrote a 19-page unsolicited essay in which he argued that the president of the United States is above the law. Such an assertion is absurd. No American is or should be above the law. If the president were above the law, he would be on the way toward being a monarch or dictator. Such an expansion of executive power would be dangerous and would undermine the rule of law and our democratic institutions.

While I had the flu last week, I read former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe's book "The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump." McCabe and other FBI agents tracked Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, a Russian "kingpin" who successfully fixed a figure skating competition in favor of the Russians in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In 2013, Tokhtakhounov was indicted for money laundering connected to an illegal gambling ring operating out of Trump Tower. Several months after the indictment, Tokhtakhounov was a VIP guest at Donald Trump's Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

So Andy McCabe knew that Trump was involved with the Russians under questionable circumstances for a long time before he became president.

Yet McCabe had no problem, despite Comey's decision not to file charges, with FBI director James Comey's public criticism of Hillary Clinton's use of a personal server in sending emails to associates 11 days before the 2016 election. Comey was a friend. Comey called McCabe after Trump asked Comey to drop his investigation of Trump campaign aide Michael Flynn.

"This was the moment when I realized that the president and his administration were not just inexperienced, not just unfamiliar with the established norms democratic government. They wished to manipulate the functions of government mainly for their own interests," wrote McCabe.

AG Barr whitewashed the Mueller report and Mueller seems to have helped him do that by ignoring compelling evidence that Pres. Trump obstructed justice, including Trump's admission to NBC anchor Lester Holt in a TV interview that he fired James Comey because "of the Russia thing." If that's not obstruction of justice, firing the FBI director investigating the president, what is?