November 25, 2019: Judge Rules that Don McGahn Must Testify Before Congress

 

11/25/19: U.S. District Court judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, rules against the Trump administration in a critical case. At issue is whether or not the White House can ignore a subpoena calling on Don McGahn, former Chief Counsel, to come before the House Judiciary Committee and give testimony. In her 120-page opinion, Judge Jackson rules that the answer is no. McGahn must appear.

 

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“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings.” 

U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

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In a powerful opinion, Jackson writes: 

Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior-level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.

 

The argument that had been put forth by President Trump’s lawyers, that Trump aides had “absolute immunity” from testifying, Jackson labeled a “fiction.” 

Blatant defiance of Congress’ power to compel witnesses to testify, she calls “an affront to the mechanism for curbing abuses of power that the Framers carefully crafted for our protection.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE 4/23/2022): The judge has since been elevated to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, with only three Republican senators voting for her confirmation. Because, the GOP has become the party that ignores real abuse of power.