PRIMA FACIE

Trump fired Comey in May, and has said publicly that he was considering the Russia investigation when he did so; that fueled allegations of obstruction of justice. A week after Comey's firing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel, granting him a broad mandate to investigate crimes related to Russian interference, including potential obstruction.

"If it turns out that General Flynn has information implicating Mr. Trump in a crime, there's now a much stronger inference that Mr. Trump was obstructing justice if he asked Comey to let the investigation of General Flynn go," said Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham University and a former associate special counsel in the Iran-Contra affair.

According to the statement of the offense Mueller issued, Flynn informed a senior member of the Trump transition team on December 29, 2016, that Kislyak had contacted him. During that conversation, they discussed that senior members of the transition team did not want Russia "to escalate the situation" with regard to sanctions. On January 24, four days after Trump took office, Flynn attempted to mislead federal investigators looking into the matter. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to Congress that she warned the White House that Flynn had been compromised by those conversations on January 26, four days before she was fired for ordering Justice Department officials not to defend Trump's newly issued travel ban. Flynn was not forced to resign until February 13, after his conversations with Kislyak were reported in the press.

"Many points that might form the basis of an obstruction case flow through Flynn," said Clinton Watts, a former FBI special agent who is currently a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "President Obama warned Trump about Flynn before he took office. Yates contacted the White House about Flynn and was fired shortly after. Trump pressured Comey about Flynn and then later fired him." [...]

But Flynn's plea could be even more perilous for another, even closer presidential adviser: Jared Kushner, who is also the president's son-in-law. According to The Daily Beast,  Kushner "best fits the description" of the senior transition official with whom Flynn discussed his outreach to Kislyak. NBC News reported Friday afternoon that Kushner is indeed the senior transition official named in the document. If it was Kushner, his own statements to investigators will be closely scrutinized.  

"If Mr. Trump knew that Flynn met with the Russian ambassador at Mr. Kushner's request and then lied about it, one can assume that Mr. Trump wanted to shut down the FBI investigation to protect his son-in-law more than Flynn," Green said.

"It's now clearer that Trump was aware--or certainly should have been aware--that a continuing investigation of Flynn would bring things closer to him and his family, as it now has," said a former Justice Department official. "So it's not merely that a continuing investigation might serve as a continuing distraction, or be a source of political embarrassment. It's that it could point to the involvement--and potential criminal liability--for him and members of his family. It goes to motive, which is not something that the prosecutor needs to prove, but it sure makes life easier in making and proving [a] case."

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