Trump & Former W/H Counsel Don McGahn: Lose DC Appeals Court Case

Promise you’ll always have my back and äss, okay

(Just like dummy Stephen Miller there)

This update and history lookback at the following Don McGahn story previously and widely reported on: 

WASHINGTON (The AP) — A federal appeals court DC on Friday (August 7) revived House Democrats' lawsuit to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to appear before a congressional committee, but it also left other legal issues unresolved with time growing short in the current Congress.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 7-2 in ruling that the House Judiciary Committee can make its claims in court. That reverses the judgment of a three-judge panel that would have ended the court fight (and just before the Trump impeachment started which favored him at the time).

The matter now returns to the panel for consideration of other legal issues. The current House of Representatives session ends on January 3, 2021 which means it’s “crunch time” and that means: “The chances that the Committee hears McGahn’s testimony anytime soon are vanishingly slim.” That from dissenting Judge Thomas Griffith along with Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson who also dissented.

The Judiciary Committee first subpoenaed McGahn back in April 2019 as it examined potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump during the Mueller Russia investigation. 

Trump directed McGahn not to appear and the Democratic-led panel filed a federal lawsuit to force McGahn to testify.

Then a trial judge ruled in November 2019 that the president’s close advisers do not have the absolute immunity from testifying to Congress that the administration was claiming. Griffith and Henderson formed the majority when the appellate panel said in February that the Constitution forbids federal courts from refereeing this kind of dispute between the other two branches of government.

Now the full court (7-2) says the panel reached the wrong decision.

Lawmakers can ask the courts “…for judicial enforcement of congressional subpoenas when necessary,” wrote Judge Judith Rogers. 

She also said that Congress needs detailed information about the executive branch for both oversight and impeachment.

The issue: House lawmakers had sought McGahn’s testimony because he was a vital witness for Mueller, whose report detailed the president’s outrage over the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s efforts to curtail it. 

In interviews with Mueller’s team, McGahn described being called at home by the president on the night of June 17, 2017, and being directed to call the DOJ and say that “Mueller had conflicts of interest and should be removed.”

McGahn declined that command, deciding he would resign rather than carry it out.

Once that episode became public in the news media, and according to the Mueller report, the president demanded that McGahn “…dispute the news stories and asked him why he had told Mueller about it and why he had taken notes of their conversations.”

McGahn refused to back down.

If McGahn ever testifies, and it's unclear whether his testimony would include any new revelations beyond what Mueller has already released.

Recall that Mueller concluded that he could not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice but also that there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

The Original Story: Trump’s biggest fear is seeing and knowing that he instructed McGahn not to produce documents and not to testify in response to subpoenas about Trump wanting Mueller fired.

Background on that Point: There’s no use in pretending that the White House’s announcement that it has directed McGahn not to testify to Congress comes as a surprise. It is only the latest salvo in the skirmish between Donald Trump’s administration and the Democratic House.

1.    The White House had already told McGahn not to supply documents to the House Judiciary Committee under subpoena.

2.    It sued to prevent the president’s accounting firm from providing documents to the House Oversight Committee.

3.    Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to comply with a House Ways and Means subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns.

4.    Attorney General William Barr has been held in contempt for refusing to testify to the House Judiciary Committee.

5.    Thus, now faced with Democratic investigations, the Trump team has settled on a strategy of foot-dragging and dubious legal theories.

Trump fired FBI director Comey, tried to kill Mueller’s Russian investigation, pressured aides to lie, and tried to fire Mueller himself.

The he wrote a flurry of harsh words about all that being “Fake News, a Hoax, or Witch Hunt.” All while he start stepping on Congress’s prerogatives to provide oversight, and it got very nasty very fast. That brought the Democrats to begin talking of impeachment inquiries.

If Trump were to follow through on his threat to not do anything with Congress until House Democrats drop their investigations, things could get nastier and dicier:

·       The national debt ceiling will need to be increased.

·       The government will need to be funded.

·       A senior government official told CNBC that the debt ceiling and funding are not subject to Trump’s ultimatum, but the president has demonstrated again and again that only he can speak for himself.

·       If he doesn’t act, and the U.S. defaults or shuts down.

·       That too could be fodder for another article of impeachment.

Pelosi said that she was concerned for Trump’s well-being and said he was conducting an “assault on the Constitution of the United States.” 

But Pelosi continues to say she doesn’t support impeachment, and reportedly told Democratic lawmakers, “He wants to be impeached, so he can be exonerated by the GOP-run senate.”

I note: Boy was she 100% spot on as they say.

It’s difficult to tell your members and your constituents that the president is attacking the Constitution and has committed impeachable acts, and then decline to launch an impeachment inquiry. There’s an analogy with the Republican rhetoric about impeaching Barack Obama = They did not and they paid a price in their primary elections.

My 2 cents: At this point the legal process is looking good for America and terribly bad for Trump.

So, stay tuned because: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” (That famous Yogi Berra quip).

Thanks for stopping by.