Donald Trump has turned "no collusion, no obstruction" into a battle cry, despite the fact that Robert Mueller’s redacted report pointedly declined to exonerate him for obstruction and outlined 10 instances in which Trump potentially committed the crime. And in an interview with NBC Sunday, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said that the report laid out a prosecutable case for obstruction of justice, one under which Trump would likely be indicted were he not the president.

"I’ve been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years, and I can tell you I’ve personally prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this," Yates told Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press. "And yes, I believe if he were not the President of the United States he would likely be indicted on obstruction."

"Special Counsel Mueller did a very fair job in going through all 10 instances, and laying out both the facts that established that [Trump] had committed the crime of obstruction, also pointing out the defenses, both legal and factual," said Yates. "But there are several incidents that he described to which Special Counsel Mueller really couldn’t point to any significant factual or legal defenses."

Among this later kind of indefensible conduct, Yates said, was Trump’s attempt to derail the investigation by urging then-White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Trump later allegedly instructed McGahn to lie and deny that he’d ever been told to fire the Special Prosecutor.

While Attorney General William Barr wrote in a letter to Congress before releasing the redacted report that standing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president had no bearing on Mueller’s decision not to bring charges against Trump, the report itself contradicted him. Mueller noted the policy against indicting the president in his report, and added that since Trump would not be facing charges for obstruction (at least while still in office), it would be unfair to outright accuse him of the crime as he would not be afforded the opportunity to defend himself at trial.

Yates herself had a brief tenure in the Trump administration, serving as Acting Attorney General for the first 10 days of his presidency, until the president fired her for instructing the Justice Department not to defend his Muslim travel ban.

“The bigger issue is not just whether or not this establishes a crime that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said Sunday of the Mueller report, “but is this the kind of conduct that we should expect from the President of the United States?”

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Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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