investigation. the way you prove as a from t prosecutor, somebody s intent, you don t have a magic telescope that sees inside their brain. you look at their words and actions over a long period of time and you ask a jury to form conclusions about the person s intent from those words and actions. so, for example, why was the president so angry at jeff sessions for doing what he was legally required to do by recusing himself? why did he talk about the attorney general protecting him? why did he fire james comey? why did he tweet about there being tapes during the conversations? all these specific questions that you are reading, don, relate to actions that could be used by a prosecutor to infer that the president was trying to act with the intent to impede the investigation. okay, michael, lot of questions related to the campaign s accord nation with russia. questions like there one, when did you become aware of trump
it talks about if there is no slam dunk piece of evidence in a particular obstruction case and they often search for a larger pattern of behavior, how would the tweets fit in? sure. so it s very hard in a case involving intent. a white collar case where it s not like somebody robbed a bank or did or murdered somebody. has a crowbar. yeah. exactly. a pattern of behavior and you re trying to prove did this person have the intent to obstruct justice. you almost always will be looking at a wide range of evidence to piece together what s in somebody s mind because we don t have a magic telescope that tells us what somebody s intent is. what mueller will do is look at all the things the president said and did over a long period of time that includes his tweets, his verbal statements. it includes his actions.
it in term whafts he disclosed to the russians. would that be something an investigator would want to learn more about? i don t think in this context. in a counterintelligence investigation, it might be interesting. and i think potentially i suppose it may go to his to show his state of mind regarding a predilection to do favors for the russians. i think that that would be something that they would look at maybe to show that. but i think the primary interest in this meeting is the one that you picked up on earlier which is he s talking about relieving pressure. due to the firing of comey. and sort of an odd thing to say. when you are a prosecutor and you loorking to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt, it s not an easy thing to do. i ve tried to do that many times in my career. you don t have a magic telescope to see inside somebody s mind and have to look at their own words and actions. when someone says i fired that guy and it s relieved a lot of pressure, that s an unusual st