Former FBI Director James Comey arrives for a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election on June 8, 2017. Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images

Comey, who knows Mueller well and earlier sought his approval on what he could say publicly during Thursday's congressional hearing, suggested his fellow former FBI director is already investigating whether Trump obstructed justice. "I'm sure the special counsel will work towards to try to understand what the intention was there and whether that's an offense," Comey said during the hearing. But Joyce Vance, who was the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama until earlier this year, called Trump's actions "possibly lawful, but awful." "His conduct indicates clearly here that he believes that he is above the law," she said. "You can't imagine Obama or Bush or any other president in our lifetime making these kind of requests directly to the attorney general, let alone the director of the FBI." But are his actions obstruction? "Maybe they're obstruction, maybe they're not technically illegal, maybe they're just completely inappropriate," she said. John Lauro, who has been on both sides of obstruction cases as a former federal prosecutor that now runs a white collar criminal defense firm, was more definitive. "Without a doubt in mind, it's not obstruction of justice," he said. "This doesn't even come within the zone of what obstruction is." Legally, obstruction charges hinge on proving a person acted with "corrupt intent" to prevent the government from learning something. "It's a very very high bar," Lauro said of proving someone's intentions. "It's a very very difficult statue to get convictions on." But Jens David Ohlin, a professor and dean at Cornell Law School, said the bar is completely different in this case, because it's set by Congress, not by the courts "Would he be convicted? I don't know, but that's not the right question to be asking. He's not going to get prosecuted," Ohlin said. "The more relevant question is, is this the type of obstruction of justice which is so corrupt that the House should take the extraordinary measure of impeaching the president, and for the Senate to convict him and remove him from power?" "It sounds like this is a person who is using his authority to stop an investigation," Ohlin added. Many Democrats have already accused Trump of obstructing justice in firing Comey, but Republicans have, who control both chambers of Congress, have not.