Legal experts say of all the charges filed against the former president and his aide, obstruction is one of the most serious.
Of all of the federal charges that former president Donald Trump and his aide Walter Nauta face in the investigation into the alleged mishandling of top secret government documents, obstruction is one of the most serious, according to legal experts.
Claire Finkelstein, the founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, noted that the obstruction charges in the indictment against Trump and his aide carry as much serious weight as the charges related to keeping the top secret documents, with a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Finkelstein this was not surprising, as the federal government has always treated allegations of interfering with any investigation seriously and often spearhead these kind of probes.
“You can see it as the most important charges, as protecting the rule of law goes,” she said.
Finkelstein said an obstruction charge can cover a broad change of alleged activities from as simple as lying to investigators to as major as destroying evidence. But it all comes down to one clear allegation, she said: That the accused deliberately interfered with an ongoing criminal investigation.
“[U.S. Code] 1001 is lying to investigators. Very, very often you find 1001 charges filed in federal court,” she said.
