Professor Jed Shugerman was quoted in a Media Matters article about possible abuse of power committed by President Trump, which was revealed during ex-FBI Chief James Comey’s congressional testimony.
“It’s clear that with [Trump’s] firing of Comey, he shows the combination of trying to influence the investigation lined up with what else Trump knew at the time and what Trump himself said: that he fired Comey related to the Russian investigation,” said Fordham University Law School legal historian and law professor Jed Shugerman when asked to react to Comey’s testimony. “All of that together is very clear proof of Trump’s intent.”
“You have to look at the entirety of the testimony, the timelines and especially that it ended with the firing [of Comey],” Shugerman explained. “It is not clear that all the events just in the written testimony constitutes obstruction. The case for obstruction turns on the end result: the firing. When you take that all together, focused on a background to the firing, that’s the obstruction case.”
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“The Republican pushback is a strategy of isolating individual moments, but you have to put all of that in with the firing. In context and in tone, it felt like a directive from his boss,” said Shugerman.