MORE SMOKING GUNS THAN BUNKER HILL:

That section of the Mueller report--which also refers to former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, then White House Counsel Don McGahn II, and the former Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak--reads as follows:

By the time the President spoke to Comey about Flynn, DOJ officials had informed McGahn, who informed the President, that Flynn's statements to senior White House officials about his contacts with Kislyak were not true and that Flynn had told the same version of events to the FBI. McGahn also informed the President that Flynn's conduct could violate 18 USC §1001. [US Code Title 18 § 1001 is the federal statute that makes it a felony to lie to the FBI or other federal investigators, a crime that Flynn did indeed later plead guilty to.]

The significance of this section is that Trump's personal attorneys have always defended the president by arguing to the special counsel that Trump did not know that Flynn was under criminal investigation for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak. For nearly nine months, despite my own reporting for the Daily that contradicted their story, the Trump legal team's version--that Trump did not understand Flynn was under investigation when he leaned on Comey--largely prevailed. That was until the Mueller report finally laid to rest this fiction.

The central incident in any potential obstruction case, described on page 46 of Volume II of the Mueller report, is well known: Comey had alleged that Trump had pressured him, while the two men were alone in the Oval Office, on February 14, 2017, to shut down an FBI investigation of Trump's former national security adviser, Flynn. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Comey testified the president said to him. 

Despite Trump's denial that he said this to Comey, the special counsel concluded that "substantial evidence corroborates Comey's account." An obstruction of justice is an effort to "corruptly" impede or interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation. The special counsel uncovered evidence that Trump did exactly that. But for Trump or anyone else to obstruct justice, the law also requires that there must be a "nexus to a proceeding," meaning that anyone attempting to stymie investigators must clearly have understood that whomever they were attempting to protect was under criminal investigation.

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