Democrat: Trump counsel recounted ‘troubling events’
WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Friday that a nearly eight-hour interview with former President Donald Trump’s top White House lawyer “shed new light on several troubling events” during his presidency, though it was unclear how Democrats would use the information long after investigations into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia have concluded.
The closed-door interview, which came two years after House Democrats originally sought his testimony, was originally part of Democrats’ efforts to investigate whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct Justice Department investigations into his 2016 presidential campaign. House Democrats sued after Mr. McGahn defied an April 2019 subpoena on Mr. Trump’s orders.
Mr. McGahn appeared Friday after an agreement was reached in court to sit for a transcribed interview behind closed doors, with his answers limited to information that had already been publicly released in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Mr. Trump and Russia. That report also came out in April 2019.
Even if the interview unearths new information, Democrats made clear that it was primarily for history, and to set a precedent that executive branch officials must comply with congressional subpoenas. Mr. Nadler said in a statement after the interview that it was “a great victory for congressional oversight,” although two years had been too long to wait.
Since Democrats first subpoenaed Mr. McGahn, Mr. Trump was impeached twice by the House and acquitted twice by the Senate. Neither impeachment centered on the Russia investigations, in which Mr. Mueller pointedly did not exonerate Mr. Trump of obstruction of justice but also did not recommend prosecuting him, citing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president.
Still, Mr. Mueller’s report quoted extensively from interviews with Mr. McGahn, who described the Republican president’s efforts to stifle the investigation.
In a statement released after the interview, Mr. Nadler said he could not comment on Mr. McGahn’s testimony, but said “McGahn was clearly distressed by President Trump’s refusal to follow his legal advice, again and again, and he shed new light on several troubling events today.” Mr. Nadler said a transcript of the interview would be available “at a later date,” as laid out in the court agreement.
At a break in the interview earlier, Mr. Nadler said Mr. McGahn was being “somewhat difficult” at times. While the questioning was led by staff, a handful of members of both parties attended, including Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Matt Gaetz of Florida.
Mr. Gaetz, a close ally of Mr. Trump, said near the end of the meeting that “we’ve learned nothing new.”
As White House counsel, Mr. McGahn had an insider’s view of many of the episodes Mr. Mueller and his team examined for potential obstruction of justice during the Russia investigation. Mr. McGahn proved a pivotal — and damning — witness against Mr. Trump, with his name mentioned hundreds of times in the text of the Mueller report and its footnotes.
Mr. McGahn described to investigators the president’s efforts to choke off the probe and directives he said he received from the president that unnerved him. He recounted how Mr. Trump demanded that he contact then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order him to unrecuse himself from the Russia investigation.