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McGahn is ‘most important witness’
House Judiciary Committee sues to compel testimony
House Judiciary Committee asks a federal judge to compel testimony from former White House counsel.
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WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee asked a federal judge on Wednesday to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn, whom lawmakers consider their “most important” witness in any potential impeachment proceeding against President Donald Trump.
McGahn figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice during the Justice Department’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The committee subpoenaed him in April but the White House blocked his testimony, claiming McGahn had “absolute” immunity.
Lawyers for the committee’s Democrats call the assertion “spurious” and say it has no grounding in case law.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, escalates the monthslong feud between congressional Democrats and the president. It marks the first lawsuit Democrats have filed to force a witness to testify since they regained control of the House in the fall and subsequently launched a series of investigations into the president’s conduct and finances.
The House has not formally voted to launch impeachment proceedings, but Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has said the panel is pursuing an impeachment investigation.
“Given McGahn’s central role as a witness to the president’s wide-ranging potentially obstructive conduct, the Judiciary Committee cannot fulfill its constitutional investigative, oversight and legislative responsibilities — including its consideration of whether to recommend articles of impeachment — without hearing from him,” the lawsuit says.
McGahn’s lawyer, William Burck, said that McGahn will abide by the president’s instructions absent a contrary decision from the court.
McGahn, now a partner at Jones Day, “has an ethical obligation to protect client confidences,” Burck said. “Don does not believe he witnessed any violation of law. And the president instructed Don to cooperate fully with the special counsel but directed him not to testify to Congress unless the White House and the committee reached an accommodation.”
McGahn left the Trump administration in October.
The lawsuit says McGahn witnessed “nearly all of the most egregious episodes of possible presidential obstruction,” and his statements are mentioned in the special counsel’s 448page report more than 160 times.
For instance, on June 17, 2017, three days after The Washington Post reported that the special counsel was investigating whether the president had obstructed justice and a month after Mueller was appointed, Trump called McGahn at home twice and directed him to fire Mueller over alleged conflicts of interest, the complaint says, citing the report.
McGahn declined, advising the president that this “would be ‘another fact used to claim obstruction of justice,’ ” the lawsuit says.
McGahn again resisted when the president sought to have him issue a public statement and a “letter” refuting media reports, published in January 2018, indicating that Trump had ordered McGahn to have Mueller fired the previous summer, according to the suit.
And he rebuffed the president’s effort in March 2017 to get him to pressure thenAttorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia probe, the lawsuit says. When McGahn declined, Trump “expressed anger at McGahn about the recusal,” the complaint says.
McGahn also was a “key witness” to the events leading up to Trump’s decisions to fire his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and then-FBI director James Comey in apparent attempts to end the Justice Department probe into Russia’s election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates, the complaint stated.
“McGahn is uniquely positioned to explain those events, bring additional misconduct to light, and provide evidence regarding the president’s intent,” the complaint says, noting that Trump has disputed significant portions of these events and accused McGahn of fabricating facts. “Live testimony from McGahn is essential” to resolving any conflicting accounts, it says.
House Democrats are sharply divided on the question of impeachment, with just over half, including Nadler, favoring proceedings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has argued that Democrats ought to use the courts to make their case against the president, and she has repeatedly pointed out that voters are less interested in impeachment than they are in issues such as health care and the economy.