What the FBI would be doing is saying, on the criminal side, we believe the firing of James Comey was obstruction of justice.

And by opening the counterintelligence side, they are formalizing the suspicion of underlying collusion, which the obstruction was trying to prevent from being discovered.

Hi, and welcome to Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the Supreme Court, and the rule of law.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover those things for Slate.

A whole lot of Supreme Court happenings this past week, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sitting out oral arguments as she continues to recover from major surgery.

And a surprising unanimous decision this past week holding that

independent contractors who work in transportation cannot be forced into mandatory arbitration.

Court also handed down a 5-4 decision about use of force under the Armed Career Criminal Act,

and that 5-4 breakdown was not the usual suspects. The court now enters

its long winter break. RBG is promising. She'll be back on the bench for the February

sitting. And we are, I should note, well into the longest partial government shutdown in

American history. But that said, we thought this is a good week to

look back and try to make some sense out of what we've come to think of as the law of

Trump on this show since we've had not one, not two, but three massive new developments

on that score in this week alone. Last Friday, we learned for the first time from the New York Times that the FBI had started a counterintelligence inquiry into whether Donald Trump himself was somehow working for the Russians during the campaign.

Over the weekend, we learned from the Washington Post that Trump had had several meetings with Vladimir Putin for which there are no notes because the notes had been confiscated and destroyed.

And then late Thursday night, BuzzFeed offered up another bombshell to suggest that Donald Trump had actually directed his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump

Tower in Moscow. Now, if that latter reporting proves true, this is evidence for what I think

is the kind of obstruction that made its way into the articles of impeachment against both

Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, who were alleged to have encouraged witnesses to make false statements under oath.

And we've talked a lot about the Mueller probe on this show.

We've talked to government lawyers. We've talked to white-collar crime experts and former federal prosecutors.

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