Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, is a CNN legal analyst and a Rutgers University scholar. He writes the weekly "Cross Exam" column, answering reader's questions about the law, for CNN Opinion. Watch Honig answer reader questions on "CNN Newsroom" at 5:40 p.m. ET Sundays. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) When I was a federal prosecutor, I once indicted and tried a man named Roberto Ortiz for trying to convince his ex-girlfriend to leave town for a few weeks so she could not testify against him at an upcoming trial for illegal firearms possession. Despite Ortiz's efforts, the ex-girlfriend did not leave town, and a trial jury convicted Ortiz on various charges including witness tampering.

Elie Honig

Ortiz's obstructive conduct pales in comparison to President Donald Trump's prolonged campaign to torpedo the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election. That is one reason why I signed a letter along with more than 400 other former federal prosecutors who said that if Trump were a private citizen they would have indicted him on obstruction of justice charges based on the evidence set forth in Mueller's report.

"Each of us believes," the letter states, "that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice."

The letter from former prosecutors has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with the law. The signatories to the letter cross all boundaries. There are Republicans and Democrats and many who served in administrations of both parties (I served about equal time as a federal prosecutor under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and later worked for five years as director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice under Gov. Chris Christie).

Prosecutors from virtually every state signed the letter. Some served for a few years, others for decades. Some signatories worked among the highest ranks of the Department of Justice while others worked on the line.