Donald Trump and his inner circle fret over what White House lawyer Don McGahn has told Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.
On Saturday, The New York Times revealed details of at least three discussions between McGahn and Mueller’s team. Drawing from more than a dozen sources, the newspaper said the talks lasted 30 hours in total, with much of the conversation focused on possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
Topics included Trump’s attempt to limit investigation of his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; firing of FBI James Comey in May 2017, in an unsuccessful quest to halt the investigation; repeated attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from oversight of the inquiry; and Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller, rebuffed by McGahn.
See TrumpWatch, Day 576: White House Lawyer McGahn Cooperating with Mueller’s Russia Inquiry
While McGahn was careful to say that he never saw Trump go beyond his legal authority, Trump’s lawyers have been caught out because they have given only a limited account by McGahn’s attorneys, according to “two people close to the President”.
The sources said Trump’s team realized their difficulty on Saturday after the Times story broke. After McGahn was initially interviewed by Mueller’s office in November, Trump’s lawyers never asked for a complete description of the encounter. Fearing that McGahn might be set up as a scapegoat by Trump’s inner circle, his lawyer William Burck only provided a brief overview of the first interview and subsequent discussions.
In a TV interview on Sunday, Trump’s lead lawyer Rudy Giuliani said his knowledge of the case was given to him by a former Trump lawyer John Dowd: “I’ll use his words rather than mine, that McGahn was a strong witness for the President, so I don’t need to know much more about that.”
Dowd authorized McGahn’s first interview with Mueller’s team but left Trump’s team in March amid disputes over legal strategy.
Trump showed his frustration in six Sunday morning tweets. Complained that he is a victim of McCarthyism, Trump compared McGahn with John Dean — the White House counsel to Richard Nixon who pleaded guilty in October 1973 to obstruction of justice over Watergate:
The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2018
….and have demanded transparency so that this Rigged and Disgusting Witch Hunt can come to a close. So many lives have been ruined over nothing – McCarthyism at its WORST! Yet Mueller & his gang of Dems refuse to look at the real crimes on the other side – Media is even worse!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2018
Sources — some of whom appear to be close to McGahn — said that, contrary to Giuliani and Trump’s assertions, the White House lawyer is not acting as a personal defender of Trump. Instead, McGahn sees himself as a protector of the Presidency, according to those familiar with the discussions.
On Saturday, Trump — spending the weekend at his golf resort in New Jersey — ordered his lawyer Giuliani to tell reporters that the article was wrong.
Giuliani did not go that far in his Sunday interviews. Instead, he lied about a June 2016 meeting between Trump’s top advisors and three Kremlin-linked envoys. In a convoluted exchange about a Donald Trump interview with Mueller, he proclaimed, “Truth isn’t truth”:
