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Just spitballing here, but it seems pretty weird for a president to (attempt to) deliver instructions to his Attorney General using his former campaign manager as an intermediary.
If the argument is “the president’s use of his Article II powers can’t be obstruction” then it seems sort of relevant that Trump was asking a crony outside the government to deliver instructions to his own Attorney General.
I can’t think of a legitimate reason to do it that way; it sounds like an effort to issue an instruction that’s deniable and doesn’t leave a paper trail. Which to my mind goes to both intent & whether it’s reasonable to treat as a normal exercise of executive authority.
Ditto the effort to get McGahn to lie about efforts to remove Mueller. It’s at minimum counterintuitive that you get to deploy an Article II defense about an order you’re denying having issued, and also telling your subordinates to falsely deny.
