McGahn testifies before House panel
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee questioned former White House counsel Don McGahn privately Friday, two years after House Democrats originally sought his testimony as part of investigations into former President Donald Trump.
The long-awaited interview is the result of an agreement reached last month in federal court, and a transcript will be publicly released within a week. House Democrats — then investigating whether Trump tried to obstruct the Justice Department’s probes into his presidential campaign’s ties to Russia — originally sued after McGahn defied an April 2019 subpoena on Trump’s orders.
That same month, the Justice Department released a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the matter. In the report, Mueller pointedly did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice but also did not recommend prosecuting him, citing Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. Mueller’s report quoted extensively from interviews with McGahn, who described
the Republican president’s efforts to stifle the investigation.
While the Judiciary panel eventually won its fight for McGahn’s testimony, the court agreement placed limits on it. The two sides agreed that McGahn would be questioned privately and would be compelled to answer questions only about publicly available portions of Mueller’s report.
House Democrats kept the case going, even past Trump’s presidency, and moved forward with the interview to make an example of the former White
House counsel after dozens of Trump administration officials refused to answer questions from Congress on various matters. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the agreement for McGahn’s testimony was a good-faith compromise that “satisfies our subpoena, protects the Committee’s constitutional duty to conduct oversight in the future, and safeguards sensitive executive branch prerogatives.”
It is unclear what House Democrats will do with the testimony, which they sought before twice impeaching Trump. The Senate acquitted Trump of impeachment charges both times.
At a break during the interview, Nadler said McGahn was being “somewhat difficult” at times during the interview, but did not characterize what he had said. Nadler said there were a handful of Democrats and Republican lawmakers in the room in addition to staff who were leading the questioning.
As White House counsel, McGahn had an insider’s view of many of the episodes that Mueller and his team examined for potential obstruction of justice during the Russia investigation. McGahn proved a pivotal — and damning — witness against Trump, with his name mentioned hundreds of times in the text of the Mueller report and its footnotes.
Trump’s Justice Department fought efforts to have McGahn testify even after District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2019 rejected arguments that Trump’s close advisers were immune from congressional subpoena. President Joe Biden’s administration helped negotiate the final agreement.