It’s easy to get lost in the technical thickets of former FBI Director James Comey’s Senate testimony on Thursday. Did President Donald Trump really obstruct justice, as many Democrats argue, or was he simply a neophyte politician with a ham-fisted approach to management who didn’t understand that law enforcement is supposed to be independent? This question only raises further questions about what constitutes obstruction, whether there has to be an underlying crime, and whether Trump’s state of mind is relevant in rendering judgment.

These are all issues for lawyers and judges to dispute, but if you get lost in the forest you’ll miss the bigger picture: Comey, a highly respected government official with a distinguished legal career, painted a damning portrait of a president who lacks the necessary character to execute the office he holds.

Comey had several notable interactions with Trump after the 2016 election and took meticulous notes about them. The profile of Trump that emerges is of an arrogant, obsessive, dishonest, and self-centered man. Consider why Comey kept notes in the first place, as he explained to Virginia Senator Mark Warner:

WARNER: What was about that meeting that led you to determine that you needed to start putting down a written record? COMEY: A combination of things. I think the circumstances, the subject matter, and the person I was interacting with. Circumstances, first, I was alone with the president of the United States, or the president-elect, soon to be president. The subject matter I was talking about, matters that touch on the FBI’s core responsibility, and that relate to the president, president-elect personally, and then the nature of the person. I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting so I thought it important to document. That combination of things I had never experienced before, but had led me to believe I got to write it down and write it down in a very detailed way.

According to Comey, these concerns about the “nature of the person” were vindicated after Trump fired him a month ago. “Although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader,” Comey testified. “Those were lies, plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I’m so sorry that the American people were told them.” The “nature of the person” is particular to Trump, as Comey, who also served under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, made clear:

[A]s FBI director I interacted with President Obama, I spoke only twice in three years, and didn’t document it. When I was Deputy Attorney General I had a one one-on-one with President Bush about a national security matter. I didn’t document that conversation either. I didn’t feel with President Bush the need to document it in that way. Because of the combination of those factors, just wasn’t present with either President Bush or President Obama.

Comey’s testimony gives us a sense of what having such a prevaricator as president means for public servants just trying to do their job. For Comey, Trump’s very “nature” made it necessary to take precautions that aren’t necessary when dealing with an honest or honorable person.