Time for another vivid portrait

The Trumpies Just Say No.

The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, according to people familiar with the matter, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report.

The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking.

Planning, or plotting. It can’t be called thinking.

McGahn was mentioned more than 150 times in Mueller’s report and provided damaging accounts to investigators about how the president pressured him to oust the special counsel and then pushed him to publicly deny the episode.

But Congress can’t investigate that, because PreZiDent Trump is ABOVE THE LAW.

Public testimony from McGahn could create a spectacle that would parallel the June 1973 testimony of President Richard Nixon’s former White House Counsel John Dean, whose live televised appearance before a Senate committee painted a vivid portrait for the country of the White House coverup of the Watergate burglary.

Wait a second. McGahn is a private citizen now. He doesn’t work for Trump any more. He can just testify voluntarily, can’t he?

Ah well, they answer that in the next paragraphs.

People close to McGahn, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said McGahn is “following the process” and working with the White House on his next steps, despite Trump’s public and private anger about his former White House counsel’s prominence in the Mueller report.

“He’s not eager to testify. He’s not reluctant. He got a subpoena. It compels him to testify. But there are some countervailing legal reasons that might prevent that,” said one person close to McGahn, who requested anonymity to describe private discussions. “He doesn’t want to be in contempt of Congress nor does he want to be in contempt of his ethical obligations and legal obligations as a former White House official.”

How about his moral obligations to the country and the world? Trump is a reckless criminal running amok. I think that outweighs putative “ethical obligations as a former White House official.”

2 Responses to “Time for another vivid portrait”