My heart is drowned / In the slow sound / Languorous and long

With the words in the caption (which is actually the English translation of the second set of  three lines of the Paul Verlaine’s poem “Chanson d’automne” that were actually broadcast in French: “Blessent mon coeur/D’une langueur/Monotone”) broadcast by the BBC on June 5, 1944, the Allies sent a signal to the French Resistance that sabotage efforts on rail lines should begin.

We have recently been informed that:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Several of the remarks came as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men — both key witnesses in the inquiry — about the investigation, and Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add up to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.

Of course, Rudy Guiliani responded that:

Generally obstruction is secret, it’s clandestine, it’s corrupt. I’ve looked at those tweets and they don’t amount to anything.

But today:

President Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday to end the special counsel’s inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, issuing a strikingly unambiguous directive on Twitter to shut down an investigation that even now is scrutinizing his tweets for possible evidence of obstruction.

The White House and Mr. Trump’s lawyers moved quickly to minimize the president’s statement, dismissing it as merely a case of venting and opining by a president who has grown increasingly angry and frustrated with an investigation that he considers illegitimate — and not a direct order to a cabinet secretary to interfere with an ongoing federal law enforcement matter.

Of course, even before World War II, we knew that things could be hidden in plain sight.

So, are Trump’s tweets nothing but the noise from a bombastic blowhard, as Guiliani contends, or a subtle signal in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.  Perhaps this is, as lawyers like to say, a question of fact for a jury (or the Senate in an impeachment proceeding) to decide.