css75 wrote:JohnStOnge wrote:
It was not entrapment. All Trump had to do was to just take a "hands off" approach. Instead, he did things to obstruct the investigation.
How can you obstruct an imaginary crime?
The fact that you obstruct decreases the chance that the prosecutor will find sufficient evidence to convict for the underlying crime.
When one reads the Mueller report it becomes clear that the investigation had a problem due to obstruction. They made it very clear that their conclusion with respect to not finding sufficient evidence should not be construed as "it didn't happen." Here are the final few paragraph's of the Executive Summary of the
The investigation did not always yield admissible information or testimony, or a complete
picture of the activities undertaken by subjects of the investigation. Some individuals invoked
their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office's
judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity. The Office limited its pursuit of other
witnesses and information-such as information known to attorneys or individuals claiming to be
members of the media-in light of internal Department of Justice policies. See, e.g. , Justice
Manual§§ 9-13.400, 13.410. Some of the information obtained via court process, moreover, was
presumptively covered by legal privilege and was screened from investigators by a filter ( or
"taint") team. Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes
provided information that was false or incomplete, leading to some of the false-statements charges
described above. And the Office faced practical limits on its ability to access relevant evidence as
well-numerous witnesses and subjects lived abroad, and documents were held outside the United
States.
Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct
we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign---deleted relevant
communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature
encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In
such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to
contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared
inconsistent with other known facts.
Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office
believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps,
the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional
light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.
Obstruction can lead to a situation in which there is not sufficient evidence to document the underlying crime. That's why it matters.