A former prosecutor who worked on the Watergate investigation says that there is “no question” President Trump was involved in obstruction of justice.
The remarks from former prosecutor Nick Akerman came a day after former FBI Director James Comey testified in the Senate for the first time since Trump fired him in May.
“Yeah, there’s no question that Trump was involved in obstruction of justice,” Akerman said Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”
“The Comey testimony today makes that crystal clear,” he added of Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Akerman compared former national security adviser Michael Flynn to James McCord, one of the first people arrested in the Watergate investigation. Trump asked Comey to drop an FBI investigation into Flynn, according to Comey.
{mosads}“The bottom line is the president is worried that Flynn is going to turn into the next James McCord, the Watergate burglar who wound up getting a heavy sentence and then fingering the people in the White House.”
Akerman additionally dismissed Trump’s government inexperience as an excuse for the president’s encounters with Comey.
“The idea that he is some kind of naive waif who doesn’t understand how Washington works or the criminal system [works] is absurd,” said Akerman, who was the former assistant special Watergate prosecutor.
Comey said Thursday that he believed Trump directed him to end a criminal investigation into Flynn.
“The reason I keep saying his words is I took it as a direction,” he said of Trump. “I took it as, this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it.”
Comey stopped short, however, of saying whether Trump’s alleged remarks about the Flynn investigation qualify as obstruction of justice.
“I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct.”
Comey detailed his encounters with Trump in memos before the president fired him in May.
A memo Comey reportedly wrote after speaking with Trump in February claimed the president pressed him to end the probe of Flynn.
“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to one of his memos.
Comey’s firing came amid the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race, including possible ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign.