Joy Reid jumps all over guest claiming Comey and McCabe firings don't qualify as obstruction

A segment on AM Joy Saturday morning briefly went off the rails as an attorney attempted to play devil's advocate and suggest the firing of both FBI Director James Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe don't rise to the level of obstruction of a federal investigation into the Trump administration.

Digging deep into the odious firing of McCabe by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just 26 hours before the veteran of  21 years law enforcement  would have become eligible for his pension, host Reid pressed attorney Seema Iyer and former prosecutor Nick Akerman for their takes on the dismissals.

"This feels like, from a lay perspective, the sort of textbook elements of obstruction -- of attempting in every way to signal that the president would like the deputy attorney general to end the investigation himself," Reid suggested."When does it become obstruction?"

"The whole thing is a pattern of obstruction," an animated Akerman exclaimed. "It goes to his intent to end this investigation and here we are, all talking seriously about this crazy [Dowd] e-mail and what's going on when. In fact, we're all being played by Donald Trump. He wants us to be talking about this. He doesn't want us to be talking about Stormy Daniels now."

"We'll be doing that, too," Reid laughed.

'We've been played since he won the election," Iyer conceded, before switching gears. "That's separate. It's not yet obstruction just because --."

"What more does he have to do?" Reid exclaimed as she cut her off. "He's saying fire Mueller. He almost loses his White House counsel over wanting Mueller fired. He has now fired or reassigned all three potential fact witnesses who heard from Jim Comey directly that he was pressured to give a loyalty oath and pressured to back down off the investigation."

"Just because he wants an investigation to end.." Iyer attempted as Reid cut her off once again, blurting, "He is the president. He's their boss."

"He wants to know what's going on in the investigation, that doesn't mean he acted with corrupt intent," Iyer suggested, adding "I see Nick is rolling his eyes at me," as Akerman smirked.

"I just don't believe that," Akerman exclaimed. "There is corrupt intent across the board here. He wants this investigation ended because he is now in the middle of it. And it's not so much the obstruction investigation as the the investigation of the conspiracy between his campaign and the Russian government."

Watch the video below via MSNBC: