Counsel is 17th Trump aide to depart
White House adviser McGahn to leave as relationship strained by probe into Russian interference in election
WHITE House counsel Don McGahn, whose relationship with US President Donald Trump has been strained by the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is set to leave the job in the coming weeks.
Mr Trump announced on Twitter yesterday that Mr McGahn would leave after the US Senate confirms the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. He will become the latest in a long string of high-ranking advisers to leave Mr Trump’s side.
Mr McGahn did not know the tweet was coming, an administration official said, but he had been planning to leave the White House because he felt he had achieved his goals in getting conservatives named to federal judgeships, rolling back regulations and reeling in the bureaucracy.
Mr Trump announced Mr McGahn’s departure less than two weeks after it was reported that he had voluntarily co-operated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, which the president repeatedly has decried as a “witch hunt”.
In his interviews with Mueller’s team, Mr McGahn was asked about Mr Trump’s actions in firing FBI director James Comey in 2017, the ‘Washington Post’ has reported. Other topics included Mr Trump’s criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia probe.
Mr Trump later told reporters at the White House that he has “a lot of affection for Don” and said he was not concerned about what Mr McGahn told the Mueller probe. “We do everything straight,” he said. “We do everything by the book. And Don is an excellent guy.”
Mr Mueller’s investigation already has resulted in guilty pleas for several Trump insiders, indictments, co-operation deals and one conviction. Russia has denied meddling in the election.
Mr Trump has not settled on a replacement for Mr McGahn, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. There has been speculation the job would go to Emmett Flood, a veteran Washington lawyer who joined the White House in May to help with the Russia probe.
“People like him,” Ms Sanders said of Mr Flood. “He’s super well-respected around the building but there’s not a plan locked in place at this point.”
Mr McGahn could not be reached for comment.
With his departure, he will become part of an unprecedented level of turnover among modern administrations studied by presidential scholars. Of Mr Trump’s top 27 aides listed on his first annual staff report to Congress, Mr McGahn will be the 17 th to depart.
The news was met with dismay by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, who wrote in a tweet addressed to Mr Trump: “U can’t let that happen.”
George Hartmann, spokesman for the committee, said Grassley viewed Mr McGahn as the lynchpin to Mr Trump’s push to fill judicial vacancies. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell praised Mr McGahn as “the most impressive White House Counsel during my time in Washington”.
With help from Mr McGahn, Mr Trump has reshaped the federal judiciary in a conservative direction, tilting the balance on the Supreme Court to the right, and filling a record-breaking number of seats on the influential federal appeals courts during his first two years in office.
Mr Trump’s success in filling vacancies has been key to building and retaining political support among Republican voters.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump warned evangelical leaders that if Republicans lose control of Congress in the mid-term elections, Democrats will institute change “quickly and violently”, ‘The New York Times’ has reported.
At a White House meeting, the US president said everything was at stake for his conservative agenda if his party loses in November, according to an audiotape of the meeting obtained by the ‘Times’.
Democrats “will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently”, Mr Trump said.
“They will end everything immediately.”