It was a bizarre conversation in public between a defendant and the head of the government prosecuting him. Trump’s statement on the trial and on Manafort triggered the latest round of calls for impeachment. In Washington Monthly, David Atkins simply wrote, “That is a crime. It’s called jury tampering. The president has a legal obligation to refrain from commentary in an ongoing trial that directly impacts him, particularly from denouncing his own government’s case against the accused.”

It is actually not even an express legal obligation, though presidents have uniformly respected the legal process by refraining from such public statements. It is most certainly not jury tampering. First of all, the jury was already deliberating and ordered not to read or watch coverage of the case. How it can be jury tampering with a jury that is barred from hearing the statement is a mystery. Second, even if the jury violated court orders and listened to the words, it is not jury tampering to criticize the special counsel’s prosecutions. Thus, it is not true that “the president just committed another impeachable crime today,” as Atkins state. Yet, that does not make the president’s comments appropriate or accurate.