Former top Trump administration officials likely saved the president from obstruction of justice charges.

Enter this direct quote from volume 2, page 158, of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests. [James] Comey did not end the investigation of [Michael] Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn's prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. [Don] McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order. [Corey] Lewandowski and [Rick] Dearborn did not deliver the President 's message to [Jeff] Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President's direction to have the Special Counsel removed, despite the President's multiple demands that he do so.

Assuming that any of the testimony offered by the aforementioned individuals is true, had any of them acted in service of Trump's purported requests, their actions would have meant serving directives towards obstructing justice. Fortunately for Trump, his officials decided to ignore him.

Lewandowski and Dearborn stand out here in their choice to ignore the president. After all, had they followed Trump's direction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to limit the special counsel's investigation from that which Sessions had mandated, they would have acted to obstruct an already underway investigation. A successor special counsel to Mueller could then have used that evidence to argue that Trump acted to disrupt a lawfully authorized investigation.

Next time Trump wants to lambaste an official, perhaps he should actually praise them!