'A roadmap of criminal liability': Ex-federal prosecutor breaks down Mueller's Trump-Russia questions

After questions purportedly sent from special counsel Robert Mueller to President Donald Trump's legal team leaked on Monday night, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti posted a lengthy Twitter thread analyzing the questions and explaining their significance.

Mariotti starts off by outlining how the questions are "a roadmap of Mueller’s view of Trump’s potential criminal liability," before breaking down why Mueller asks certain questions very broadly, while asking other questions with a very tight range of specificity.

In short, Mariotti believes that the more specific questions show that Mueller believes he has the goods on Trump committing obstruction of justice.

"Many of the questions about obstruction are highly detailed, asking about specific tweets and statements by Trump," he writes. "The questions on other topics are much more vague -- typically 'What do you know about' a topic?... The questions about obstruction are detailed and focus on pinning down Trump as to his intent. Firing Comey was only obstruction of justice if Trump acted with a 'corrupt' intent—in other words, with the intent to unlawfully hinder the investigation."

But Mariotti believes that the non-specific questions should really terrify Trump's lawyers because Mueller's team will inevitably ask more pointed followup questions that will contain evidence they can't possibly know about.

"What has to scare Trump’s team are broad questions like 'During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?'" he writes. "His lawyers have to piece together what documents Mueller has and what other witnesses will say."

Read the whole tweet storm below.