Story highlights Comey said it "wasn't for him" to say whether the President was trying to obstruct justice

Special counsel Mueller has wide-ranging authority to investigate Russia's attempt to meddle in the 2016 election

(CNN) Eyes were glued to screens Thursday as former FBI Director James Comey described in vivid detail his past encounters with President Donald Trump, but one looming legal question went unanswered during the Senate hearing: Did Trump's actions amount to obstruction of justice?

Some legal experts say Comey's testimony -- while remarkable in many ways -- didn't move the needle on that precise question.

"In one key respect, all of today's drama was anti-climatic, because Comey couldn't really speak to the single most important question about obstruction -- whether the President fired him out of a desire, however uniformed or misplaced, to alter the course of the Russia investigation," said Steve Vladeck, CNN legal analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

But that's not unexpected for someone who is simply a fact witness, said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. Comey wasn't there, Mariotti said, to reach a legal conclusion.

2/ Comey appropriately did not weigh in on legal determination or @POTUS intent because he's a fact witness. — Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) June 8, 2017

Senators nevertheless tried every way they knew how to press Comey to weigh in on the issue -- especially when it came to the President allegedly saying to Comey in February that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had "been through a lot" and "I hope you can let this go" -- a reference Comey understood to mean the FBI's investigation (and which the President's personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, disputes).

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