Tag: Donald F. McGahn II

Erin Schaff/The New York Times WASHINGTON — House Democrats vowed on Friday to pursue the revelations in the special counsel’s report on President Trump but drew little Republican support in a nation still deeply polarized over the investigation that has dogged the White House for two years. “Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, challenged the credibility of Mr. McGahn’s account later on Friday. “It can’t be taken at face value,” he said in an interview. “It’s a mystery why Rudy Giuliani feels the need to relitigate incidents the attorney general and deputy attorney general have concluded were not obstruction,” said the lawyer, William A. Burck. “But they are accurately described in the report.” On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidates condemned the president’s conduct and called for action against him. Mr. Trump’s critics called it a devastating indictment of a candidate willing to profit from the help of a foreign power and a president who repeatedly sought to disrupt or end the investigation even if he was not charged with violating the law. The subpoena issued on Friday by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, escalated a fight with Mr. Barr over what material Congress is entitled to see from the investigation even as Democrats continued to pummel the attorney general for effectively serving as the president’s defense lawyer. “The department will continue to work with Congress to accommodate its legitimate requests consistent with the law and long-recognized executive branch interests.” Mr. Barr redacted about 10 percent of the report, blacking out information that would divulge secret grand jury evidence, expose classified intelligence, compromise continuing investigations, or invade the privacy or damage the reputation of “peripheral third parties.” Democratic leaders on Friday rejected Mr. Barr’s offer to show just select leaders a version with only the grand jury material redacted. “The attorney general stands ready to testify before our committee and to have the special counsel do the same.

As the White House mounted a furious assault on the Mueller report and critics of a president not found to have conspired with Russia but not cleared of obstruction of justice, the chair of the House judiciary committee said obstruction, if proven, “would be [an] impeachable” offence. Asked on NBC’s Meet the Press why Trump was so angry at Mueller and former White House counsel Don McGahn, a key witness, Giuliani replied: “Because they tried to frame him.” There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. It depends on where it came from Rudy Giuliani The first volume of Mueller’s report concerns Russian election interference and the Trump campaign’s warm reception to “offers of assistance” including an infamous June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Giuliani told CNN: “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. House judiciary committee chair Jerrold Nadler told NBC that if evidence shows Trump obstructed justice, “some of this would be impeachable, yes”. On Fox, House intelligence chair Adam Schiff said to impeach or not to impeach was “going to be a very consequential decision and one I’m going to reserve judgment on until we have a chance to fully deliberate on it”. The American people, a lot of them clearly still don’t believe President Trump is doing things to destroy our democracy Elijah Cummings Giuliani fiercely attacked McGahn, who is cited by Mueller in descriptions of orders from Trump to fire the special counsel, which McGahn did not do. I wasn’t asked. Asked if Trump thought Russian interference helped him win, Giuliani told NBC: “Whether he did or he didn’t, I think it’s quite clear that there are a lot of factors that go into any election and the reality is he was elected president.” Conway told ABC Trump “didn’t need WikiLeaks. Trump has repeatedly claimed Mueller’s investigation exonerated him, which it did not, and called the inquiry a “hoax”.

Joining us now to talk through what the release of the report means for the president is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. CHANG: So it sounds like the president is pretty happy. LIASSON: Well, there's a lot of damaging information. Mueller actually corroborated several news reports that the president has called fake - one of them where he asked his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to order the deputy attorney general to fire Bob Mueller, which he didn't do, or the Mueller report validated news reports that show the president dictating the false statement about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. LIASSON: Yes. JERRY NADLER: The responsibility now falls to Congress to hold the president accountable for his actions. You can call on the Russians to hack your opponents' emails. And remember Mueller's bottom line - no Trump campaign official knowingly assisted the Russian government in their interference, and no American illegally participated in Russia's hacking of emails. CHANG: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. LIASSON: Thank you.

This is a moment, people: It’s a major crossroads in Donald J. Trump’s presidency. (If you read only one section, make it pages 290-299, which detail Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel.) This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.” [Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.] The report notes, though, that the tapes were likely “fake.” The report also details a search by Mr. Trump’s associates for Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, which Mr. Trump, in July 2016, publicly asked Russia to help him obtain. What about the obstruction investigation? “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice,” they wrote, “we would so state.” Here’s some of what they’re describing: • For 13 days after Mr. Trump asked Mr. Finally, on May 30, the president returned the letter with a notation: “Not accepted.” • Mr. Trump repeatedly called Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, at home and ordered that he have Mr. Mueller removed. The two-volume document is a redacted version of the report written by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, presenting the findings of his team’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and into Mr. Trump’s possible effort to influence the outcome. Mr. Barr, the attorney general, released a four-page summary of Mr. Mueller’s report last month, in which he said the investigation did not find that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russian government and cleared the president of the charge of obstruction of justice. A lot of Democrats were skeptical of Mr. Barr’s summary — particularly on the obstruction issue — and pushed for the release of the full report.