Related from the former newspaper The New York Times a long while back: (
Why Obstruction of Justice Is a Hard Crime to Prove)
"Any inquiry into possible obstruction will confront Supreme Court decisions that have been notably hostile to obstruction cases that push the limits of the law. There is plenty of wiggle room in the statutes that make it difficult to prove the necessary intent to obstruct justice, so gathering credible evidence to show what was in the mind of anyone who might try to impede the investigation will be paramount."
[...]
A second provision frequently used is
18 U.S.C. 1512(c), which makes it a crime for any person who corruptly “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” Congress added this subsection in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to broaden the reach of the obstruction of justice provision to more clearly include conduct like that involving the accounting firm Arthur Andersen’s shredding of documents related to its audit of Enron.
The firm was convicted in 2002 even without this change in the law, but the Supreme Court subsequently reversed the jury verdict in
Arthur Andersen v. United States because the trial judge gave a flawed instruction on what constituted “corruptly.” The court, with Chief Justice Rehnquist writing the unanimous opinion, explained that corrupt conduct was “normally associated with wrongful, immoral, depraved or evil” actions, which requires a consciousness of wrongdoing rather than just a questionable result.
There have been comparisons of Mr. Trump’s statements to the Watergate cover-up that toppled President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. The
“smoking gun” recording in that case, however, was much more incriminating as Mr. Nixon told H. R. Halderman, his chief of staff, six days after the break-in that the C.I.A. needed to tell the F.B.I. “don’t go any further into this case.”
Whether Mr. Trump could be found to have the requisite intent is not clear from the memorandum Mr. Comey is reported to have written about their conversation in February. Asking the F.B.I. director to “let this go” regarding Mr. Flynn is the type of ambiguous comment that might not be interpreted as directly interfering in the investigation, and therefore insufficient to establish a corrupt intent.
United States v. Ermoian that interference in an F.B.I. investigation was not the type of proceeding the statute was meant to cover.