Elizabeth: Hi, Emily. Nice to be sharing a page with you! It is, indeed, remarkable to see such a divided and partisan response to something that seems so clear-cut. News stories had reported that Comey kept memos of private conversations with Trump — conversations in which Trump demanded Comey’s “loyalty,” and told him: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” referring to his National Security Adviser who was under investigation. Comey’s written testimony confirmed every last detail from those reports and added a few more regarding additional conversations he had with the president — including a cryptic reference by Trump to the “the McCabe thing,” suggesting that our president might have his cross hairs on the acting FBI director.

There’s no legal “grey area” that I can see here. Yes, intent matters, but the president helpfully spelled out his unlawful intent (he seems to do that a lot, by the way): to get Comey to back off the Flynn investigation. That’s called obstruction of justice. The statement by Trump’s lawyer that the president feels “completely and totally vindicated” by Comey’s testimony was particularly bizarre given that Trump and the White House had both flatly denied the president ever made such a request. True, Comey’s testimony confirms that as of March 30, the F.B.I. wasn’t investigating Trump himself, but that’s hardly proof of innocence. After all, as Comey points out, that could change. I guess Trump and his supporters feel “vindicated” because… he’s still the president?

Emily: In the Washington Post, one of the Watergate prosecutors, Phllip Lacovara, argues that Comey’s prepared remarks laid out enough evidence for what what Lacovara calls a “prima facie” case of obstruction of justice. For now, though, I’m going to take the advice of University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck and move away from the narrower legal question. Whether Trump’s discussions with Comey about Flynn do or don’t constitute the crime of obstructions “misses the point,” Vladeck writes on Twitter. “The shameless interference is the story.”

An antidote to my dismay about partisan reactions: On the National Review, conservative writer David French describes Comey’s account of the exchange in which Trump asked him for loyalty and concludes:

“There’s no serious argument that this is appropriate behavior from an American president. Imagine for a moment testimony that President Barack Obama or a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton had a similar conversation with an F.B.I. director. The entire conservative-media world would erupt in outrage, and rightly so. The F.B.I. director is a law-enforcement officer, loyal to the Constitution, not the president’s consigliere.”

Elizabeth: I agree with Lacovara. Yes, to some extent, all of this obstruction talk is academic. The Department of Justice has long taken the position that criminal charges can’t be brought against a sitting president because that would “undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions” (true enough). As long as that remains the Department’s position, Attorney General Jeff Sessions couldn’t bring charges even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. But that’s not quite the same as saying that whether the president violated a criminal law “misses the point.” It matters because it is perhaps the most egregious in a string of incidents that underscore the president’s disdain for the rule of law… and also has some relevance to a little something that begins with the letter “i.”