Trump aide gives Mueller coveted details
Report: McGahn feared he was being set up to take blame
WASHINGTON — The White House counsel, Don McGahn, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter.
In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours during the past nine months, McGahn described the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.
McGahn gave special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, the officials said: a sense of the president’s mindset in the days leading to the firing of former FBI Director James Comey; how the White House handled the firing of former national security adviser Michael Flynn; and Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, how Trump repeatedly berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions, tried to get him to assert control over the investigation and threatened to fire him. McGahn also was centrally involved in Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller, which investigators might not have discovered without him.
‘Keys to the kingdom’
For a lawyer to share so much with investigators is unusual. Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege.
“A prosecutor would kill for that,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, which did not have the same level of cooperation from President Bill Clinton’s lawyers. “Oh my God. … It would have been like having the keys to the kingdom.”
McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mueller. The president’s lawyers have explained that they believed their client had nothing to hide and that they could bring the investigation to an end quickly.
McGahn and his lawyer, William Burck, could not understand why Trump was so willing to allow McGahn to speak freely to the special counsel and feared Trump was setting up McGahn to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, according to people close to him. So he and Burck devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mueller to demonstrate that McGahn did nothing wrong.
It is not clear Trump appreciates the extent to which McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel. The president wrongly believed McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.
In fact, McGahn laid out how Trump tried to ensure control of the investigation, giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president. McGahn cautioned to investigators that he never saw Trump go beyond his legal authorities, though the limits of executive power are murky.
Pair have ‘great relationship’
This account is based on interviews with current and former White House officials and others who have spoken to both men, all of whom requested anonymity.
Through Burck, McGahn declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office also declined to comment.
Asked for comment, the White House sought to quell the sense of tension.
“The president and Don have a great relationship,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “He appreciates all the hard work he’s done, particularly his help and expertise with the judges and the Supreme Court” nominees.
Mueller has told the president’s lawyers he will follow Justice Department guidance that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Rather than charge Trump if he finds evidence of wrongdoing, he is more likely to write a report to Congress for lawmakers to consider impeachment proceedings.