Then again, neither was he to determine anything about illegal activities involving Ukraine elections that happened prior to the 2016 campaign and elections.
He was to investigate Russian interference, collusion, and anything else that properly came up as a result. If Trump tried to obstruct the investigation, that would be one of those things that came up. It's like false testimony, and whether or not to allow a witness to change his/her testimony when faced with evidence that the testimony is mistaken. There's prosecutorial discretion in there and bias and partiality among those trying to be as unbiased and impartial as possible.
But it's complicated. Was he a target? If so, when did he learn he was a target. If he's not a target and says he's innocent and not a target is that obstruction if he's later deemed a target? What if he's really a target and wasn't to the truth, either because his target status wasn't known to the person he spoke with or he was mislead? Did he intentionally bring pressure to bear in order to interfere? Was there pressure felt that he didn't intent--or pressure ignored that he did intend? Was he an innocent person just saying, "I'm innocent"--in which case what, exactly, did he obstruct? The finding of "no indictment"?
On the one hand, there's the actual quotes, in verbal context. But even verbal context leaves out phrasing, body language, physical context. The prosecutor has to build a story that the jury would find plausible and convincing when confronted with the defense's competing story. Given the sieve that we've all said Trump's memory is, it's that much harder to be convincing: If he doesn't remember, then the "willful" bit falls away.
Then there's the open-ended demand for silence that the charge would seem to require. I mean, sure, there's political hay in saying, "We can allege everything we want, but if it's something that might be investigated, without your knowledge, by Mueller, then you have to be quiet and can't rebut our accusations. Heh-heh." It's like Daniels with the non-disclosure agreement. She wasn't allowed to say anything about it, even as everybody else was talking, speculating, asking, alleging, affirmation, deducing things. It's one thing for an NDA to say, "Be quiet" when speaking up requires getting everybody's attention, or there's at most some inquiries about it. It's rather another thing when there's an international fire tornado about it raging around you and it's wreaking havoc in your life. One doesn't anticipate that kind of situational silence when signing off on the NDA.
In fact, even inquiring as to whether you're a subject of the investigation, if you're the investigator's boss, could be taken as an attempt to influence, and the perception could easily be asymmetrical. And to ask the investigator's direct supervisor would be to exert influence on it. "Hey, Mueller, Trump asked me about your investigation. Took a personal interest in it." If I had my boss tell me that *his* boss was asking about me, I'd consider that pressure. Even though that's a completely reasonable thing to do. Meaning that a political event has to be treated as entirely hands off by a politician facing political speech directed his way.
The entire thing I consider to be unreasonable and the best you can do is find the least unreasonable path through it. I don't know that Trump did so (I'd be surprised if he did), but I'm not sure the absolute best is either adequately discrete or required. In the end, Rorschach test.
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