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>>You can’t have obstruction without a crime.<<

I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect that you can have obstruction without an underlying crime, since obstruction itself is a crime.

Trump could have, for example, paid off Mueller to stop his investigation, and do so just for political reasons unrelated to Russian collusion, i.e., just to get him off his back permanently.

That would be (I think) obstruction. The corrupt intent would be satisfied by the fact there was a payoff.

AG Barr cited the lack of collusion because it goes to motive. If there was no collusion, then President Trump’s motive for wanting the investigation stopped (or hindered by, say, firing Comey) could not have been to stop the investigation from revealing said collusion. But it could have been obstruction for another reason entirely. I’m not saying it was, just that you can’t rule it out because the crime being investigated didn’t occur.

I suspect, given the makeup of the attorneys hired by Mueller, that most of them desperately want Trump driven from office prematurely. They probably salted the full report with plenty of opinions that this or that action by Trump and his administration could have been obstructive. Some probably even felt that his “Fake news” proclamations were obstructive.

All of those opinions in the report will eventually come out, simply because Mueller said in his report that he couldn’t conclude one way or the other whether there was obstruction, that there was evidence on both sides. Had he not done that, the matter would be ended. I doubt Mueller wanted it to end, however, so his action is a ploy to keep the investigative apparatus going in other venues. It gives the left a way to keep the narrative going which, as we’re seeing, is exactly what’s happening.