There's evidence to open case against Trump: Preet Bharara

Preet Bharara, the India-born former topUS federal prosecutor, has said that there was enough evidence to begin an obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump over his alleged interference in the Russia probe.

Bharara also alleged that before firing him, Trump tried to cultivate relationshipwith him and that the pattern was similar to that of sacked FBI Director James Comey. Bharara was one of the 45 attorneys who were asked to resign earlier this year by the Trump administration.

"I think there's absolutely evidence to begin a case (against Trump). I think it's very important for all sorts of armchair speculators in the law to be clear that no one knows right now whether there is a provable case of obstruction," Bharara told ABC News. "It's also true I think from based on what I see as a third party and out of government that there's no basis to say there's no obstruction," he said in his first television interview after being fired by Trump.

Bharara's remarks come after Comey testified on Thursday that Trump asked him to drop an investigation involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the probe into Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 US polls. Trump said he is "100 per cent" willing to testify under oath on Comey meetings and tell the FBI Special Consul Robert Muller that he never asked FBI to stop investigating.

Bharara said, at this point, on whether or not the president has legal authority to fire or to direct an investigation, he does really get it.

"It's a little silly to me. The fact that you have authority to remove someone from office doesn't automatically immunise that act from criminal responsibility," the 48-year- old attorney argued. "And I'll give you an example of something from a different context. If it were to be true, and this is all made up for the sake of argument...that Michael Flynn offered a million dollars to Donald Trump and said I'm going to give you this million dollars and I'm giving it to you because I want you to fire Jim Comey and then Donald Trump fired Jim Comey, which everyone agrees he has the absolute authorisation and authority to do, that would be an open and shut federal criminal case," Bharara opined. So this argument that one keeps hearing on the shows that the mere fact that the president can fire an official at will does not solve the problem he said.

Coming out in defence of Comey, Bharara said nothing in the memo or in the conversations that the sacked FBI chief had with his friend at Columbia Law School was classified.

"Second, I don't understand what the privilege argument is. You know, the president's team fully was aware that the memo was going to be discussed and the conversations were going to be discussed at the hearing and had the opportunity, when many reporters asked if they would invoke executive power to try to prevent some of that from being talked about and they declined that opportunity," he noted.

"The main point that people should be focusing on, from what I can see, is that you have uncontroverted from someone who was under oath that on at least one occasion, the President of the United States cleared a room of his vice president and his attorney general, and told his director of the FBI that he should essentially drop a case against his former national security adviser. And whether or not that is impeachable or that's indictable, that's a very serious thing," he said

It is an incredibly serious thing if people think that the President of the US can tell heads of law enforcement agencies, based on his own whim or his own personal preferences or friendships, that they should or should not pursue particular criminal cases against individuals, he said. Talking about attempts by Trump to cultivate a relationship with him, Bharara said there were "unusual phone calls".