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Robert Mueller at an installation ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington.

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Among Washingtons white-collar defense bar, whether Donald Trump was under personal investigation was not a matter of if, but when: There plainly is a question of obstruction, a lawyer who served in a previous administration said in an interview, shortly after it was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller appeared to be building an obstruction case against the president. Prosecutors are not going to leave anything like this untouched . . . they have to look at it. They have no choice.

But, in terms of the law, the path forward is anything but clear. To begin with, whether a sitting president can even be indicted is a matter of legal debate. The notion is this: if you allowed a president to be indicted, any U.S. attorney in any place in the country for political reasons could indict the president, and that would cause havoc, white-collar lawyer Robert Bennett, who represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals, explained to me. The remedy would be for the Justice Department or the special counsel to turn over the evidence to Congress and they would initiate an impeachment proceeding and then there would be a trial in the Senate with the chief justice presiding.

And, while Trump admitted on national television that he fired F.B.I. Director James Comey to hinder the Russia investigation, it is a long way from [Robert Mueller] taking a look at it to making [a] case, one leading Washington defense lawyer said. All those complications, difficulties, burdens that a prosecutor has to make in such a case still are there. Mueller, whom Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe last month, and his team would have to prove that Trumps actions were driven by corrupt intentthat he knowingly and willfully tried to thwart the F.B.I. investigation.

This corrupt intent is what remains to be shownhe has to be concealing something. In the opinion of several attorneys I spoke to, Trumps reported request that he hoped Comey could see his way to letting this go, letting Flynn go, in reference to former national-security adviser Mike Flynn, and his subsequent decision to fire the F.B.I. director dont, on their own, meet this standard. Its just not a garden-variety obstruction case, the D.C. defense lawyer continued, after noting the constitutional protections a president has to fire subordinates. I cant think ofand I dont believe one existsa case in which counterintelligence and criminal law investigation have merged or overlapped the way that they have in this case . . . I think it is a very delicate and difficult puzzle to put together for that reason.

Bennett echoed the sentiment. Of course I am not in a position to know all of the evidence, but right now I dont see where you would have a good case or a strong case on obstruction of justice.

One key to the puzzle, say attorneys, is whether Trump or someone else gave any assurances to Flynn or other subjects of the investigation, such as the presidents campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Trump is reported to have called Flynn after hed been fired and told him to stay strong, but otherwise this is a dark area. We have looked at what he said to people that could help influence the course of the investigation, but we havent looked at the question of what understanding he might have reached with the beneficiaries, the former White House lawyer said.

[Trump] is a prosecutors dream because he keeps talking.

While William Jeffress, a D.C. trial attorney who represented I. Lewis Scooter Libby in the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plames identity under George W. Bush, understands firsthand the risks of perjury and obstruction charges in political scandalsthe fate that befell Libbyhe believes that based on Trumps actions to date, Muellers ability to build a viable obstruction case against Trump could hinge on what he uncovers about the Trump campaigns Kremlin ties. The question is what evidence is there of collaboration between the Russians and the Trump campaign. That is what we dont know now, Jeffress said. If there is evidence out there that there was collaboration and Mr. Trump knew it, and against that background he was seeking to influence the investigation, hes got a problem . . . If they wind up not producing evidence of that, I think that affects their obstruction charges as well because you wouldnt be in a position to say that they were trying to keep people quiet.

To determine what, if any, coordination occurred between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 election, Mueller is assembling an all-star legal team. He has hired a dozen top-notch legal minds to help him in the probe, including Michael Dreeben, a leading expert on criminal law, Andrew Weissmann, who rose to prominence for his work on complex cases against New York mobsters and Enron executives, and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. lawyer with experience in organized crime. Already Muellers team has reportedly begun digging into the business and financial dealings of Flynn, Manafort, and Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

Critics on the left, and even some on the right, have been quick to highlight parallels between Watergate and the Russian melodrama captivating Capitol Hill. Most recently, amid rumors that Trump might fire Mueller, comparisons were drawn to the Saturday Night Massacre. But the D.C. defense attorney argued that Trumps actions have yet to bubble up to Nixons level of infamy. To be fair to Trump, he said Watergate encompassed a much greater and more expansive set of acts, direct acts by the president to interfere in an ongoing investigation than we have seen so far.

He did, however, also stress that Trump has been, and likely will continue to be, his own worst legal nightmare. For a prosecutor, there is a clear pattern to Trumps fulminations against anyone involved in the F.B.I. probe, from Comey to Mueller to Rosenstein, in turn. In effect, he supplied evidence against himself I guess is the ironic part of all this. In one sense, he is a prosecutors dream because he keeps talking.

In this respect, Trumps personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, has followed the presidents leadwhich is precisely the opposite of how defense attorneys ordinarily like to relate to their clients. They have already violated all the rules of dealing with this thing, so I dont know that there is much left for them to do tactically except to let it play out, the defense lawyer said of Trumps legal team. Its like they ratify these things and they make it harder for the investigators to look the other way or ignore . . . they are making one mistake after another.

So while Mueller may not yet have enough to build a case, the president is continually supplying new material. As the former White House lawyer said, Trumps capacity for making it a lot worsethrough his choice of counsel, choice of tacticsshouldnt be underestimated.

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