President Trump’s attempt to stonewall investigations by House Democrats by preventing former aides such as White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying is an uphill…
President Trump’s attempt to stonewall investigations by House Democrats by preventing former aides such as White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying is an uphill legal battle.
The White House has signaled that it will assert executive privilege to block McGahn and others from testifying.
But Trump allowed McGahn to speak to special counsel Robert Mueller and permitted the release of the special counsel’s redacted report without asserting executive privilege, a decision that could make it hard to justify the new argument in court.
“It’s unlikely that the White House would prevail in blocking any testimony of Don McGahn on the basis of executive privilege,” said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who is a frequent contributor to The Hill.
“The problem for the White House is that the areas that Congress is most interested in were covered in detail by the special counsel,” Turley added.
Trump on Wednesday signaled he will take a hard line on all of the Democratic probes, vowing to reporters that he would fight “all the subpoenas” and saying he would take any effort to impeach him to the Supreme Court.
He cast Democrats as hopelessly mired in political games, arguing they were not after the truth.
“Look, these aren’t impartial people,” he said. “The Democrats are trying to win 2020. They’re not going to win with the people that I see, and they’re not going to win against me. The only way they can luck out is by constantly going after me on nonsense.”
Trump’s posture mirrors the hard-nosed legal strategies he employed during his business career.
And Trump’s team may not care if their legal argument ultimately falls in court if it ties up the Democratic oversight probes while drawing Democrats into a political fight that Republicans think they can win.
One former Trump White House official described it as an effort to “fight fire with fire” and turn Democrats’ tactics against them.
“These are political hearings,” the official said. “Trump got a legal and political colonoscopy by Mueller. If there was a ‘there’ there, we’d probably know about it. This is just Benghazi in reverse.”
Democrats are pressing for access to witnesses and documents related to Trump’s tax returns and financial records, White House security clearances and other matters, in addition to more information about the Russia investigation.
