Source: Justice Dept secretly subpoenaed McGahn’s records
Congress seeking info on House, reporter phone record requests
WASHINGTON — Apple informed former Trump White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife that the Justice Department had subpoenaed information about accounts belonging to them in 2018, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday, days after two House lawmakers disclosed they, too, had their information secretly subpoenaed.
It’s not clear yet why the Trump administration sought the McGahns’ records. But the others were part of a leak probe related to the investigation of Russian-related election interference.
The extraordinary disclosure that the Justice Department sought records of a sitting White House counsel and others, which was first reported by the New York Times, raises questions about how far the Trump administration was willing to go to ferret out who it thought might be responsible for damaging information about the administration.
Separately on Sunday, the Senate’s top Democrat called on the Justice Department’s chief national security official — a Trump appointee who has remained in the
Biden administration — to testify under oath voluntarily or face a subpoena to answer questions about secretly seizing the phone data from House Democrats and reporters as part of the aggressive investigations into leaks.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it is “imperative” the Senate Judiciary Committee issue a subpoena to John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, in addition to former attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions, if they refuse to appear voluntarily.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Sunday also called on Barr, Sessions as well as Rod Rosenstein, the no. 2 Justice official at the time, to testify under oath in the House about what they knew. She declined to say whether she would push for subpoenas if they refused to appear.
“The Justice Department has been rogue under President Trump, understand that, in so many respects,” Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union. “This is just another manifestation of their rogue activity.”
Schumer and Pelosi’s demands come days after news emerged that the Justice Department had secretly subpoenaed Apple for metadata from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and another Democratic member of the panel, California Rep. Eric
Swalwell, in 2018, as their committee was investigating the former president’s ties to Russia. Schiff at the time was the top Democrat on the panel, which was led by Republicans.