DON McGAHN COULD BECOME THE “JOHN DEAN” OF THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

…The former White House Attorney, Don McGahn

Trump continues to claim he’s been “exonerated by Mueller" which is also totally false.  

Trump is telling more lies than ever before.  According to the fact checkers, he recently told 155 lies or misstatement over 4 days, and they are increasing day by day.  This appears to be his reaction to the details that were not redacted in the Mueller Report.  If we ever see the un-redacted report, Trump’s lying will probably go totally ballistic.

If nothing else, we now need to elect someone else, just to get someone that will tell the public the truth.  Good, bad or indifferent, what we have now is not acceptable for a so called “Democracy”.  A true “Democracy” is only valid when the voters receive the real information for making the appropriate voting decisions.  The man we have in highest office today, might as well be a communist dictator, based on the B.S. he feeds the American public today.

The reality is, the way that President Trump and his spinners have lied about Robert Mueller’s report should shock, but it should not surprise us.  We know that Trump operates in a world of his own making, one in which he and his buddy, Fox News, spin their parallel set of facts that have only a passing resemblance to reality.

An example is when Trump says such things as “Nobody disobeys my orders.” He continues to claim he’s been “exonerated," which is also total B.S.  The Post lists a mess of incidents in which his aides have declined to follow Trump’s orders:

• White House counsel Donald McGahn: Declined to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller.
• Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski: Declined to apply pressure on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the scope of the Russia probe.
• Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn: Declined to give Sessions a typed note Lewandowski gave him relaying the president’s message.
• Staff secretary Rob Porter: Declined Trump’s request to ask the No. 3-ranking official at the Justice Department, Rachel Brand, if she wanted to be the A.G. and take oversight of the Russia probe.
• Transition team leader Chris Christie: Declined to call FBI Director James B. Comey and tell him that Trump liked him.
• Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: Declined to do a news conference after Comey’s firing saying it was his idea.
• Deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland: Declined to write an email stating Trump hadn’t told national security adviser Michael Flynn to talk to the Russian ambassador about sanctions.
• Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats: Declined Trump’s request to say there was no link between the Trump campaign and Russia.
• Acting Attorney General Dana Boente: According to McGahn, Boente declined Trump’s request to state publicly that Trump wasn’t under investigation.
• Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: Declined to get Sessions to resign.
• Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn: Along with Porter, prevented Trump from pulling out of trade deals by pulling papers off his desk.
• Chief of Staff John F. Kelly: Along with Cohn, declined to lobby the Justice Department to prevent the AT&T - Time Warner merger.
• Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: Declined Trump’s request to assassinate Syrian President Basher al-Assad.
• Mattis: Declined Trump’s request to provide military options for Iran.
• Unnamed officials: Ignored Trump’s directive to not endorse an agreement reached at the G-7 Summit.

You could also include Jeff Sessions’ refusal to knuckle under to Trump’s demands to un-recuse himself.  (BTW: It’s not possible to un-recuse, once you’ve recused.)

Even the new “Trump patsy”, A.G. Bill Barr’s explanation that there was a lack of evidence of obstruction or that he had decided to step forward and give his own judgment, this is totally counter to Mueller’s own report.  

Ben Wittes of Lawfare aptly summarized Mueller’s thinking on this point: “We can’t indict Trump now and are thus deferring to Congress in the short term and creating a record for later prosecutorial assessment when the president leaves office. In other words, Mueller is not declining to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment; he is declining to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment now and leaving that task for someone else to do later.”

Basically, in simple language, Mueller is sticking with the Justice Department’s unofficial rule for “not indicting a sitting president”.  Mueller put all of the “obstruction of justice evidence” in his report for the Democratic House in Congress to deal with, should they decide to pursue impeachment of the president.

With regard to the basic facts of aides disobeying orders, and with conclusion where “Mueller says he would have cleared Trump of obstruction if he could, but he can’t because there is plenty of evidence”, some real truth-telling is badly needed.

Our ignorant president today, is kicking himself for not using “executive privilege” for keeping his White House aides and attorneys from meeting with Robert Mueller.

McGahn, the former White House lawyer, offered a powerful rebuttal to Trump’s delusional assertions (lies).  He disregarded Trump, and sat with Mueller for 30 hours, providing, we can seriously guess, detailed information for the “obstruction section” of Trump’s lies.  (And trump is steaming mad at McGahn.)

The good news is that McGahn will be getting his chance, similar to the chance that John Dean, President Nixon’s White House lawyer, got in his testimony that ended with the Nixon Tapes being released..

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) released a written statement, which announced: “Following the scheduled testimony of Attorney General William Barr on May 2, 2019 and the expected testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which we have requested, the Committee has now asked for documents from Mr. McGahn by May 7, and to hear from him in public on May 21.”

Nadler explained, “Mr. McGahn is a critical witness to many of the alleged instances of obstruction of justice and other misconduct described in the Mueller report. 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.”

Nadler then added, “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.”

McGahn, next to Mueller, may do more to offer the real truth to Trump’s lies than any other witness. Trump has reason to panic that his bogus narratives may be about to explode.

Trump and company are resisting any and all actions to give the congressional investigations any information.  The White House has even sued the committees from getting loan information from the Deutsche Bank, the only bank that would loan to Trump.  (Deutsche Bank was fined $10 million for money laundering.  Was some of that done for Donald Trump…?)

This is going to get much uglier before it’s finally over.

Copyright G. Ater 2019