“I’m absolutely certain the Washington swamp will bubble up with obstruction accusations,” Michael Caputo, a former adviser to Trump’s campaign, said. He noted that while he, personally, was not worried that the president would actually commit obstruction by firing Sessions, to Trump’s critics, “his McDonald’s order is obstruction.” Another former Trump campaign adviser, who worked closely with Sessions and requested anonymity to speak freely about the ongoing investigation, agreed. “Firing the [attorney general] could trigger unintended consequences such as charges linked to obstruction of justice. I’m not sure it has merit, but it would be thrown at him.”

Some legal experts disagree, arguing that, depending on Trump’s motives, such a dismissal could actually constitute obstruction. “The issue would be whether the president had a corrupt purpose—that is, a desire to cover up his own wrongdoing—when he fired Sessions,” Louis Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown, said. Seidman acknowledged the debate among legal scholars about whether a sitting president can be charged as such for performing acts that are otherwise within their constitutional powers. But he said he believes Trump could be charged with obstruction because “obstruction of justice, by its nature, is inconsistent with the president’s constitutional authority to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.” Jens David Ohlin, a professor at Cornell Law School who specializes in criminal law, said he believed that firing Sessions “would immediately provoke a political crisis for Trump and would accelerate impeachment talk—because the firing would be a major obstruction of justice, this one even larger than the Comey firing.” And despite its skepticism of the legal merits, it’s clear that the White House is taking the political consequences of the charge seriously. Roger Stone, a long-time informal adviser to Trump, said the president’s advisors “have convinced him he will be impeached if he does” fire Sessions.