8/18/18: The New York Times reports that White House Counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation. Sources say McGahn has met with investigators on three occasions and answered questions for 30 hours.
The Times writes that McGahn and his lawyer, William A. Burck, grew concerned when Trump and his lawyers at the time, John Dowd and Ty Cobb (there are a lot of lawyers in this story, so pay attention), allowed McGahn to speak to investigators without claiming executive privilege. Burck and his client “feared Mr. Trump was setting Mr. McGahn up to take the blame” for trying to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller “…so [they] devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mr. Mueller and to demonstrate that Mr. McGahn did nothing wrong.”
“A couple documents locked in a safe.”
To understand McGahn’s concern we need to go back nearly a year. On a crisp autumn day last September, Dowd and Cobb were overheard conversing over lunch at a fine outdoor dining facility in the nation’s capital. That establishment happened to be located next door to the D.C. offices of The New York Times. Ken Vogel, a new reporter, was seated close enough to hear.
Cobb was warning about a White House lawyer he considered “a McGahn spy.” McGahn, he told Dowd, had “a couple documents locked in a safe” that he’d really like to get his mitts on.
When that story leaked, McGahn is said to have decided it was time to go talk to Robert Mueller.
McGahn has told people close to him he’s anxious to “avoid
the fate of the White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, John
Dean, who was imprisoned in the Watergate scandal.”
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John Dean testified before Congress during the Watergate hearings in 1973. President Trump is trying to make sure Don McGahn never has the same kind of chance. |
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