House subpoenas Don McGahn, ex-White House counsel, in wake of Mueller report – as it happened
McGahn called before judiciary committee to testify on potential obstruction of justice linked to Trump-Russia investigation
Don McGahn has been asked to turn over documents by 7 May and testify in public on 21 May.
Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco (now) and Erin Durkin in New York (earlier)
Mon 22 Apr 2019 20.00 EDT First published on Mon 22 Apr 2019 08.54 EDT
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Key events
3h ago House Judiciary committee subpoenas former White House counsel
11h ago Trump sues House Oversight chair
12h ago Elizabeth Warren proposes free college and student debt cancellation
Summary
That’s all from me on this Monday. Here’s a rundown of the top stories in politics:
The House judiciary committee subpoenaed former White House counsel Don Mc’Gain
A few more details on the Democratic caucus conference call, via Lauren Gambino.
According to a source on the call, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made the following comments during the nearly 90 minute discussion:
We have to save our democracy. This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about saving our democracy. If it is what we need to do to honor our responsibility to the Constitution – if that’s the place the facts take us, that’s the place we have to go … And I wish you would just read my letter because it, I think succinctly, presents some of the reasons I think – whether it’s articles of impeachment or investigations, it’s the same obtaining of facts. We don’t have to go to articles of impeachment to obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.
President Trump has signed a presidential memorandum directing the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security to combat visa overstays.
The administration is considering suspending or limiting entry for individuals coming from countries with high rates of people overstaying visas, according to a press release from the White House.
The most recent report by the Center for Migration Studies, covering 2016-2017, found that overstaying a visa accounted for about 62% of newly undocumented people, compared to just 38% who “entered without inspection” – ie crossed the border without authorization.
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Here’s my colleague Lauren Gambino reporting on an internal conference call among House Democrats:
Lauren Gambino
(@laurenegambino)
Pelosi told her caucus that there are no immediate plans to pursue impeachment and reiterated what she outlined in her letter: that Democrats would continue investigating Trump following what they view as a roadmap provided for them in Mueller’s report, per 2 sources on the call
Polls are beginning to come out, providing some insight into how the release of the redacted Mueller report is being viewed by the general public.
Trump’s approval rating dropped to 39% – the lowest of his presidency – in a new Politico/Morning Consult poll. The last time Trump’s rating was that low in the same poll was in the aftermath of the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.
Another poll, by HuffPost/YouGov, which was conducted immediately after the release of the redacted report, found that 43% of Americans believe that Trump attempted to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation, compared to 34% who believe he did not.
USA Today’s Brad Heath pulled out an interesting tidbit from the details of that poll: nearly half of Republicans agree with the statement, “Nobody on President Trump’s campaign committed any crimes”, despite the fact that many people on Trump’s campaign have pleaded guilty to committing crimes. These include: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former personal attorney Michael Cohen, and campaign advisers Rick Gates, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulous.
Brad Heath
(@bradheath)
Nearly half of Republicans think “Nobody on President Trump’s campaign committed any crimes,” notwithstanding the fact that several of the aides who worked on his campaign have pleaded guilty to committing federal crimes.
Tom McCarthy Tom McCarthy
Here’s my colleague Tom McCarthy on what the McGahn subpoena could portend:
The subpoena of Don McGahn by the House Judiciary Committee could have the effect of bringing the Mueller report to life, in the sense that multiple key scenes from the report star McGahn. The former White House counsel could give a firsthand account of how Donald Trump allegedly broke the law in an effort to keep the Mueller investigation at bay.
If McGahn testifies in an open hearing about what Trump told him to do – namely, pressure deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to fire Robert Mueller, then publicly deny any such order had ever been given – that could make Trump look bad in a new way.
The request for documents in the subpoena is broad, and McGahn could be asked to testify about numerous other matters. That’s if it goes as well as it could for Democrats and others concerned about the special counsel’s findings.
On the other hand, McGahn could resist the subpoena. But he did sit for at least three voluntary interviews with Mueller’s team totaling 30 hours. His pattern of conduct to this point has been compliance.
There’s a scene in the Mueller report from a Saturday in June 2017. Trump is at Camp David and McGahn is at home in Virginia. The lawyer gets two calls from the president, which he later described to Mueller, whose report reads:
‘You gotta do this’,” McGahn recalls the president saying. “‘You gotta call Rod.’”
But McGahn did not call Rod.
McGahn considered the president’s request to be an inflection point and he wanted to hit the brakes.
Democratic members of the judiciary committee might want to hear more about that phone call and other interactions McGahn had with the president.
This is Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco picking up the live blog reins, by the way.
And here are some more details on the subpoena just issued to former White House counsel Don McGahn:
The subpoena names 36 categories of documents and communications that must be turned over, with topics including “The resignation or termination of Michael Flynn” (item No 4) and “Your resignation or termination, whether contemplated or actual” (item No 14).
Other items in the subpoena appear aimed at understanding what efforts to fight back against the Mueller investigation that may have been contemplated inside the White House, such as:
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Reversing or attempting to reverse Jeff Session’s recusal from any matters …
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Prosecuting or investigating James Comey or Hillary Clinton.
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Presidential pardons, whether possible or actual, for Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, or individuals involved in matters before the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The full subpoena can be viewed here.
House Judiciary committee subpoenas former White House counsel
Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary committee, has issued a subpoena to former White House counsel Don McGahn for testimony and documents related to its investigation into potential obstruction of justice by Donald Trump.
“The Special Counsel’s report, even in redacted form, outlines substantial evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction and other abuses,” Nadler said in a statement. “It now falls to Congress to determine for itself the full scope of the misconduct and to decide what steps to take in the exercise of our duties of oversight, legislation and constitutional accountability.”
The committee is requesting McGahn turn over documents by 7 May and testify in public on 21 May.
“His testimony will help shed further light on the President’s attacks on the rule of law, and his attempts to cover up those actions by lying to the American people and requesting others do the same,” the statement continues. “The Special Counsel and his team made clear that based on their investigation, they were unable to ‘reach [the] judgment . . . .that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice.’ As a co-equal branch of government, Congress has a constitutional obligation to hold the President accountable, and the planned hearings will be an important part of that process.”
The subpoenas can be seen here.
4h ago 16:59
Summary
Democrats grappled with their next steps after the release of the Mueller report, acknowledging divisions over whether to pursue the impeachment of Donald Trump. In a letter to colleagues, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi advised caution on impeachment, but vowed that Democrats would continue to hold hearings and “uncover the truth.” Democrats have a conference call scheduled for 5pm.
Donald Trump sued to block a subpoena for his financial records, issued by the House Oversight Committee to his accounting firm. Committee chairman Elijah Cummings called the suit baseless.
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton launched his presidential bid.
Donald Trump reversed course and said he would not appoint Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve board, saying Cain had asked to bow out.
Updated at 5.07pm EDT
Herman Cain explains his reasons for withdrawing from consideration for the Federal Reserve. For one thing, he said it would have been a big pay cut.
“I also started wondering if I’d be giving up too much influence to get a little bit of policy impact,” Cain wrote. “With my current media activities, I can reach close to 4 million people a month with the ideas I believe in. If I gave that up for one seat on the Fed board, would that be a good trade-off?”
The US is threatening to veto a United Nations resolution on combatting the use of rape as a weapon of war, the Guardian’s Julian Borger reports.
The US is objecting to language that says survivors of sexual violence should have access to comprehensive health services, including sexual and reproductive health. It’s part of a hard line taken by the Trump administration in recent months, refusing to agree to any UN documents that refer to sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such language implies support for abortions.
5h ago 15:59
Democratic presidential candidate Wayne Messam said Monday he supports impeaching Donald Trump, becoming the third Democratic primary contender to do so.
“I believe the President should be placed under impeachment proceedings and let the weight of the full report carry out the justice the American people deserve,” Messam, the mayor of Miramar, Fl., told the Hill.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and former housing secretary Julian Castro have called for Trump’s impeachment.
Don McGahn, ex-White House counsel, subpoenaed over Mueller report
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2dTrump’s moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power
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MUELLER TIME 12:27 P.M.
Mueller Exposed Trump’s Biggest Betrayal
By Barbara McQuade
Trump’s actions will only embolden Russia. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
The most important line in the Mueller report appears in the introduction to Volume I: “The Russian government interfered with the 2016 election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Our president’s response has fallen woefully short. And now we know why.
As with all things, Donald Trump made the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller all about him. But it is about so much more: our national security and the future of our democracy. Trump’s failure to protect our country from future attacks is his biggest betrayal.
Mueller has published a detailed accounting of Russia’s attack on our presidential election. His report describes how Russia conducted a social-media disinformation campaign and weaponized email messages to sabotage the election. Mueller’s description of the Russia attack makes it clear that information warfare is the new battleground.
And yet Trump continues to minimize the threat to our national security. Concerned more about the legitimacy of his presidency than the integrity of future elections, Trump still downplays the Russian attack.
The Mueller report offers insights into Trump’s thinking: “Several advisors recalled that the President-Elect viewed stories about his Russian connections, the Russia investigations, and the intelligence community assessment of Russian interference as a threat to the legitimacy of his electoral victory.” Former communications director Hope Hicks said that Trump “viewed the intelligence community assessment as his ‘Achilles heel’ because, even if Russia had no impact on the election, people would think Russia helped him win, taking away from what he had accomplished.” Her predecessor, Sean Spicer, “recalled that the President thought the Russia story was developed to undermine the legitimacy of his election.” Former deputy campaign chairman Richard Gates “said the President viewed the Russia investigation as an attack on the legitimacy of his win.” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus “recalled that when the intelligence assessment came out, the President-Elect was concerned people would question the legitimacy of his win.”
In other words, Trump was more concerned about appearing to have won a decisive victory in the election than about acknowledging and addressing an attack on our country by a foreign adversary.
Trump’s receptiveness to Russia’s overtures may even have encouraged the attacks. Despite Attorney General William Barr’s characterization that Mueller found no collusion, Mueller’s report tells a different story. Mueller says that the evidence was not sufficient to charge any member of the Trump campaign with conspiring with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election. But “the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”
Trump’s denials of Russian interference date back to the campaign. In July 2016, the Democratic National Committee announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors. Rather than denouncing the attack, Trump playfully encouraged Russia interference, at one point publicly asking, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” According to Mueller’s report, within five hours, Russian hackers tried to hack Hillary Clinton’s personal email. While the episode was not part of a formal agreement to interfere with the election, it was the kind of mutually beneficial conduct that encouraged Russia to continue its aggression.
During his first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump deflected blame from Russia, when he famously said, “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC … I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”
Even after winning the election and becoming president, Trump continued to shift blame from Russia. In June 2017, Trump tweeted that Russian hacking was a “big Dem HOAX,” asking “ … Why did the DNC REFUSE to turn over its Server to the FBI, and still hasn’t? It’s all a big Dem scam and excuse for losing the election!”
Then last July, Trump stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and outraged many American government officials when he indicated that he believed Putin when he said that it was not Russia who had interfered with the election, despite such a finding by the U.S. intelligence community.
Now we know why Trump continues to minimize Russia’s role. Trump’s narcissism about the legitimacy of his election has prevented him from publicly acknowledging Russia’s attack and providing the leadership necessary to protect us from more. A president whose focus was on leading our nation would eagerly provide deterrence to Russia in the form of sanctions and retaliation for election hacking. (While the U.S. has imposed new sanctions, at times Trump has resisted congressional efforts to punish Russia.) In addition, a responsible president would make cybersecurity a top priority of the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, Trump sows discord in our country by making immigration enforcement his prime focus.
Trump’s reaction to Russia interference will only embolden our adversary for future attacks. His self-absorption prevents him from fulfilling his duty that the laws be faithfully executed. Now that the Mueller investigation is over, and Trump’s motives have been exposed, staffers and Congress must play a stronger role in pushing Trump to the side and hardening our election system against attacks.
© 2019, NEW YORK MEDIA LLC. VIEW
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Trump’s 50 Tweets in 24 Hours Are a Frightening Window Into the Presidential Mind
Fox News is playing on loop in the background, reassuring him that all his critics are lying enemies of the state. What could go wrong?
“The Wall is being rapidly built!” our fearless leader declared. “The Economy is GREAT! Our Country is Respected again!”
It was a stirring message, something to boost the citizens of the United States as they roused themselves for work this Tuesday morning. It would have been a bit more convincing, however, if it did not contain some vintage truthlessness from Donald Trump, American president. In recent months, The Wall has become a quantum object: it is both Being Built and in desperate need of funding to be built—so much so that the president declared a phony national emergency to seize the money from Congress in a direct assault on the Constitution’s separation of powers. In reality, parts of existing barrier have essentially undergone maintenance, and our nation’s Respect-o-Meter is certainly not moving in a positive direction.
It would also be a bit more reassuring if it were not merely the latest of more than 50 (fifty) tweets the world’s most powerful man has fired off in the last 24 hours. Yes, the last day or so has been a thoroughly frightening window into the Presidential Mind, a kaleidoscopic marescape where Fox News is playing on permanent loop in the background to reinforce the very important thing to remember, which is that The President Has Been Very Badly Mistreated!
It all kicked off as it would proceed throughout: with the President of the United States tweeting a clip directly from his favorite teevee channel.
It’s unclear who this guy is, or why he had to make his grift a transatlantic one. Doesn’t he have Brexit nonsense to peddle? Anyway, the idea Donald Trump would be America’s Uniter-in-Chief if it wasn’t for those meddling kids is a nice cortisone shot of unreconstructed delusion. Also, the Mueller Report confirms the vast majority of Russia reporting from The Fake News Lamestream Media—which also means that Trump and his team lied to the public, over and over again, about the Trump Tower Meeting and the Trump Tower Moscow deal and a whole lot else. You should read it for yourself!
This was the tenor of much of the last day’s presidential activity. The president could be found tweeting Fox clips directly or retweeting Fox News personalities (or Republican congressmen) who praised his Strong Leadership in the face of The Witch Hunt by 18 Angry Democrats, who concluded their Witch Hunt by producing a report that TOTALLY EXONERATED! him. Confused? That’s the goal. BELOW
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The Mueller Report was compiled by Robert Mueller, a registered Republican, and his team. The report presented a huge volume of evidence that Mueller and his team felt did not rise to a level where they could indict the president or his associates for conspiracy with the Russian government—a highly specific charge. In one case, Donald Trump Jr. avoided prosecution because, essentially, they did not think he knew what he was doing with the Trump Tower Meeting.
But none of this means there was NO EVIDENCE!, or that any of this behavior was acceptable for the President of the United States. He repeatedly subjugated the national interest to his personal business, and the second part of the report seems to be a referral to Congress to consider impeaching the president on the basis he repeatedly sought to abuse his power to obstruct justice in the investigation.
None of that stopped the steady stream of commentary from the Presidential Twitter Feed, however.
This is, needless to say, not how anything works. The “high crimes” in the Constitution do not just refer to criminal offenses, but could also include the president violating his oath of office. In fact, impeachment is a political process, by which the Congress decides whether the president has done things that indicate he is not fit to hold the office. The bar is, or should be, above “outright conspiracy with a hostile foreign power.”
The president and his campaign knew Russia was interfering in an American presidential election, on their behalf, and they gleefully allowed that to continue without reporting it to the FBI. Junior and others on the campaign even sought out the Russians’ help more directly. And then the president repeatedly tried to cover it all up by abusing the powers of his office to interfere in the subsequent investigation—an investigation that was also digging into the nature of the Russian attack on our democracy.
Elsewhere, it was even more desperate:
After he took a hiatus to mock CNN’s ratings—because what else does a president have to do?—Our Leader weighed in on an issue for our times: would Herman Cain join the board of the Federal Reserve?
The prospect of this appointment was so absurd that Mitt Romney managed to rattle off a passable joke about it. There is no disputing now that this is the dumbest time in history: we have instant access to more knowledge than our ancestors could even have conceived of, and yet we choose to elevate the most ignorant people with the most pathetic excuse for critical thinking skills to run the show. Nobody knows nothing about anything, and nobody cares.
After another hiatus where he discussed his conversations with other world leaders, it was back to serving as a Fox News producer. Trump tweeted out three clips in a row, including a segment from Lou Dobbs, the Fashy Benjamin Button, who bounced off a report from Breitbart (!) and hosted the bizarro former acting head of ICE to discuss. Jesus. But then it was back to Legal Analysis:
It’s not clear what in the hell this guy is saying here. One of his campaign managers, Paul Manafort, was a cooperating witness—albeit a deceitful one—in the Mueller probe. The deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, was a very cooperative witness. Steve Bannon, the former campaign chair, spoke to Mueller at least three times. Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer and an adviser on the campaign, cooperated with the feds. Jared Kushner spoke to Mueller’s team. Hope Hicks spoke to Mueller. White House Counsel Don McGahn spoke to Mueller. One of the few people who did not speak to Mueller was Donald Trump, likely because his lawyers knew that if he sat down and had to speak the truth under oath it could be the end of him.
After directly plugging an upcoming show from Lou Dobbs—the president also apparently works in Fox News PR now—it was time for a retweet bonanza. He shared a 10 minute (!) clip from talk-radio shock jock Mark Levin, who helpfully put the cover of his new pro-Trump book on an easel in the background. Buy buy buy! Then the president retweeted Maria Bartiromo (a once-normal Fox Business host who is now one of the president’s most reliable boosters), Ronna McDaniel (the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee whom he reportedly convinced to drop her maiden name, Romney, out of spite), and Tom Fitton (head of far-right activist group Judicial Watch and, apparently, a kind of decaying Baldwin Brother).
Surely the bunny agrees there was NO COLLUSION!
MANDEL NGANGetty Images
The Fitton tweets in particular referred to the Mueller investigation as a “coup,” which isn’t dangerous at all, but which makes a lot of sense considering the coup ended with the coup-orchestrators not charging the guy they supposedly were trying to remove from office. In a Trump Content Singularity, many of these friendly retweets featured more clips pulled directly from Fox News, all of which agreed that the Mueller Report was a COMPLETE EXONERATION! by the angry Democrat hacks who staged the investigation. Again, don’t think too hard about all this.
After a spell retweeting his top congressional toads—Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, etc.—there was some Easter Egg Roll content and some retweets pushing the “Opportunity Zones” program, which offers investors tax breaks on capital gains if they invest in businesses located in certain areas. Some new rules issued by the Treasury Department last week seemed to confront some of the concerns critics raised, including that a disproportionate share of these benefits would go to real-estate developers rather than start-up businesses that could generate lasting, solid-wage jobs. That’s a good thing, considering there were widespread reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner could be set to benefit in their private business from the policy they helped craft in public office. Of course, this kind of conflict-of-interest is why we have ethics policies, all of which have gone out the window during The Great American Heist.
After more Fox News clips—including one with a presidential caption of “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT”—it was time for some unfriendly-media-bashing. The president went after New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman by name, calling the Nobel Laureate economist “obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is.” This nonsense from Trump’s towering intellect places Krugman in very real danger. Then Trump repeated his zombie lie about The New York Times, once again suggesting the paper “apologized” to him for its 2016 coverage (it did not) and suggesting it should do so again for its Russia reporting (it won’t, as the vast majority of that reporting was backed up by The Mueller Report. Again, this indicates that Trump lied constantly in response to these news reports.) And then there was this flurry of Presidential Activity:
Good God, man. As Daniel Dale pointed out, the president managed to call Joe Scarborough a “Psycho” who’s “Angry, Dumb and Sick”; dismiss Democrats as “totally insane”; attack The New York Times as “Fake News” and the “Enemy of the People”; call Krugman “stupid”; and moan that Twitter is “very discriminatory.” This was all by 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday.
You would think the world’s most powerful man might have better things to do. He does not, at least by his accounting. His inner world is now consumed by these wars against anyone who could hold him accountable for what he’s done, the Fox News loop churning in the background, pumping the electric resentment and primal fear through his veins. We didn’t need the Mueller Report to see he was unfit to wield the power he has, but the conduct it lays out only bolsters the case. It is not an EXONERATION, it’s a plea for Congress to do its job in defense of the republic.
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