The new liberal Jeffry Toobin legal logic?

So the oft wrong Jeffrey Toobin wrote an interesting piece about how he now believes that "it's clear" that Trump obstructed Justice. The logic of the Toobin argument attempts to draw on the basic concept of  simple action vs action with intent... but with one pretty clear logical error.

He appears to be missing the action.

He correctly suggests that there is a difference between a company insider just selling stock because they just needed some cash, and a company insider selling stock because they have inside information that tells them that the stock price is about to go down. The former is simply an action. The latter is an action that includes criminal intent. Of course, inside trading laws are clearly written, and there are concrete factors that play into the legality of a trade. Thus, the issue isn't proving intent so much, it's still about proving that the person had inside information. You prove the facts relevant to the law, and intent follows. That's generally how laws are written. They are not written as open ended psychological questions. 

Toobin doesn't want to talk about the facts of the law, because quite frankly the law itself doesn't address the tangible actions taken. So Toobin's farcical logic is to reduce the actual facts of the law and the actual action taken place to irrelevancy, while elevating the intent into the only thing that matters.

Toobin appears to be piggy backing to some degree on the Comey argument that Clinton's actions (while clearly criminal) were not actually criminal because they lacked intent... by arguing that even if no criminal action was taken, that criminal intent can create a crime. This, of course, would effectively turn our entire legal inside out, likely with the need to replace investigators with psychologist in order to determine who is actually committing a crime.

Imagine for a second, a person being deemed guilty of a crime because they showed some sort of willingness to do so, while never following through. Would we arrest someone for driving under the influence, because they wanted to drive home from the bar, but was eventually talked out of it by concerned friends? Of course not. The criminal act never took place.

But according to Toobin, the very suggestion that Donald Trump had to be talked out of firing Robert Mueller as special counsel shows "intent" to commit a criminal act, and that intent (not the actual action) is what's important.

But even if one was willing move past the fact that Donald Trump didn't actually fire Robert Mueller (which is the only tangible fact we have right now) you still have no actual evidence that Trump's motive would have been  to "obstruct justice". The rumors were that Trump wanted Mueller out (meaning a different person could still continue the investigation) and those same rumors suggested that Trump provided specific reasons for why.

Here is the reality, folks.

Nearly everyone (across the political spectrum) at some point in time believed that James Comey needed to be fired. Whether it was for his decision to make a public statement not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton, whether it be reopening the Clinton investigation right before the election, or whether it be how he was handling the Russian collusion investigation... Comey was questioned by everyone. Simply put, he not the right man to lead the FBI forward. There was no broad confidence in him from the American public.

Furthermore, there are numerous legal experts (across the spectrum) who believe that Robert Mueller is too close (as a former FBI director and personal friend of James Comey) to an investigation that calls into question FBI tactics, the actions of his friend, as well as being the person who may be judging the reasons his friend got fired. Many believe he is the wrong person to be leading this special counsel, thus tainting the entire investigation.

Those are legitimate, if not prevailing views. At worst, they would be political disagreements. Toobin wants to turn these opinions into something criminal, because he sees something more nefarious as the true reasons for the President (and by logic anyone) questioning Comey and Mueller. He's quite literally blinded by his own partisanship and hatred for the President, that his mind cannot process that legitimate reasons exist for actions to be taken (or not taken in this case). Therefor, it should "be clear" to everyone that it's all criminal.

James Comey rewrote the laws and provided his own personal psychological evaluation to demand Hillary Clinton didn't commit the crime she tangibly and unquestionably committed. Toobin is suggesting that we rewrite the law and allow people who think like him to provide psychological evaluation to demand that Donald Trump committed a crime that he tangibly and unquestionably didn't actually commit.

This is not how criminal justice works. You cannot quite literally make up new definitions for a crime, replace objective law with subjective opinion as your determining factor for innocence or guilt... simply because you favor one Presidential candidate over another.