Fox’s Dana Perino: ‘Can You Really Obstruct Justice If You’re Not Doing It In Secret?’

Donald Trump‘s recent Twitter activity has renewed complaints that he is obstructing justice by interfering with special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation, but Fox News host and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino isn’t so sure you can be found guilty of a crime if millions of people witness it.

On Tuesday afternoon’s edition of The Daily Briefing, Perino concluded an interview with former federal prosecutor James Trusty by noting that Trump’s tweet praising Roger Stone for refusing to testify for Mueller has prompted accusations of obstruction and witness tampering.

One of those accusations comes from Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway‘s husband, George Conway, who tweeted obstruction of justice and witness tampering statutes in response to Trump’s tweet.

“If that’s the case, he’s obstructing justice in front of the world,” Perino said. “I mean can you actually obstruct Justice if you’re not doing it in secret?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Trusty said, adding that “It would be the first time in the history of man that you have… 300 million Twitter observers, or whatever the number is, saying ‘I just saw an obstruction take place’.”

“I just think it comes down a little bit to prosecutors looking at that, and saying would I really build a federal case around a tweet by a guy who tweets famously?” Trusty said.

The premise that millions of witnesses make it harder to prove a crime is counter-intuitive, to say the least. Just last week, Mediaite founder Dan Abrams stumped Alan Dershowitz, when Dershowitz made the same argument, by asking him “Where in the law does it say that [obstruction] has to be private? Where does it distinguish between private and public?”

But even on the narrow question of this one tweet, Perino and Trusty are on shaky ground. Several former federal prosecutors have gone on record to say that the Roger Stone tweet constitutes obstruction.

Unfortunately for Trump, there’s much more than this one tweet, and as Abrams also pointed out, there could be much more beneath the surface. Only Trump and Mueller know for sure. For now.

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