Trump deepens power struggle with Congress
United States President Donald Trump says he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, intensifying a power struggle between his administration and House Democrats.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said complying with congressional requests was unnecessary after the White House had cooperated with Mueller’s probe of Russian interference and the president’s own conduct in office.
‘‘There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress, where it’s very partisan,’’ Trump said.
His comments came as the White House made it clear that it plans to broadly defy requests for information from Capitol Hill, moving the two branches of government closer to a constitutional collision.
Two White House officials said the administration planned to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn, by asserting executive privilege over his testimony.
Separately, the administration directed a former White House official not to comply with a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, prompting the panel to move to hold him in contempt of Congress, while the Treasury Department defied a second demand from House Democrats to turn over six years of Trump’s tax returns.
Taken together, the moves mark a dramatic escalation of tensions between the president and congressional Democrats – deepening a fight that may ultimately be resolved only by a protracted court battle.
Trump maintained that the White House Counsel’s Office has not ‘‘made a final, final decision’’ about whether it would formally assert executive privilege and try to block congressional testimony. But he said he opposed cooperation with House Democrats, who he claimed were trying to score political points against him.
He said Democrats should be satisfied with what McGahn and other officials told Mueller, calling his decision to allow them to meet with federal investigators an act of transparency that made further congressional cooperation unreasonable.
Legal experts said a White House effort to assert executive privilege over possible testimony by McGahn and other former and current aides who spoke to Mueller would face legal challenges.
McGahn was mentioned more than 150 times in Mueller’s report, and told investigators that Trump pressured him to oust the special counsel and then pushed him to publicly deny the episode.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said yesterday he would make a final decision about whether to furnish Trump’s tax returns by May 6, committing for the first time to a specific deadline in what has become a major power struggle.