one, committed an obstructive act, two, connected to an official proceeding, three, did so with corrupt intent. those are the elements of obstruction of justice. is he on to something there? well, he is. he was reciting you know from mueller s own report which gave us about ten instances of varying degrees of possible charges of obstruction of justice. some were stronger. there are different elements as hakeem jeffries just went through and he picked one that was like three for three, right? there are several of those in the report. and it leads to the question, why didn t you indict and we know why. because justice department said i couldn t. under any definition that i proper would use, that s an indictable crime that the person should be charged with. . then you have the fact that under the law, it is legal to
going all the way back to the 60s when you served in vietnam. because i have a seat on the intelligence committee i ll have questions later and because of our limited time i will ask to enter this letter into without objection. i yield to my colleague from california, mr. liu. thank you, director mueller, for your long history of service to our country, including your service as a marine, where you earned a bronze star. i d like to turn to the elements of obstruction of justice as applied to the president s attempts to curtail your investigation. the first element of obstruction of justice requires an obstructive act, correct? correct. okay. i d like to direct you to page 97 of volume two of your report. yo wrote there on page 97, quote, session was being instructed to tell the special counsel to end the existing investigation into the president and his campaign, unquote. that s in the report, correct? correct.
president knew that he should not have directed don mcgahn to fire the special counsel, correct? and where do you have that quote? page 90, volume two. there s evidence that the president knew he should not have made those calls to mcgahn, closed quote. i see that, yes. that s accurate. the investigation also found substantial evidence that president trump repeatedly urgeled mcgahn to dispute that he was having the special counsel terminated, correct? correct. the investigation found substantial evidence that when the president ordered don mcgahn to fire the special counsel and then lie about it, donald trump one committed an obstructive act, two, connected to the initial proceeding. three, did so with corrupt intent. those are the elements of obstruction of justice. this is the united states of america. no one is above the law. no one. the president must be held accountable one way or the other.
does that mean you have to investigate all of his conduct to ascertain true motive? no. and when you talk about the president s pattern of conduct that include the ten possible acts of obstruction that you investigated, is that correct? when you talk about the president s pattern of conduct, that would include the ten possible acts of obstruction that you investigated, correct? i direct you to the report for how that is characterized. thank you. let me go to the screen again. for each of those ten potential instances of obstruction of justice, you analyze three elements of the crime of obstruction of justice. an obstructive act, and an official proceeding, and criminal intent, is that correct? yes. actions by the president to end a criminal investigation into his own conduct to protect against personal embarrassment or legal liability would constitute a core example of
linked to the russia probe, that mr. trump gave an explicit order to have special counsel robert mueller fired just a month after he was appointed. i believe to be true. that was big. trump sprinting towards the kind of saturday night massacre that led to the end of the nixon presidency. today mueller says under oath what his report documented, that trump did try to take that potentially illegal act, something trump would then reportedly try to do even more than once. today mueller spoke to the checklist required to prove whether there is a crime of obstruction. you have to say, well, is there a probe to obstruct in the first place? check. is there an obstructive act? check. and then the hardest to prove, was there criminal intent in taking that act? goes to that last becomes to check, criminal intent, showing someone not only tried to obstruct but why? something we ve been discussing in our coverage tonight. this is when jeffries highlights, there is no watergate taping system, b