Don McGahn in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on January 9, 2017Albin Lohr-Jones/DPA via Zuma Press
Donald McGahn, like all White House advisers who served before him, has a broad portfolio but one essential mission: keeping his boss, the president of the United States, out of trouble. To say McGann wasn’t good in that department is an understatement. President Donald Trump and his administration have been besieged by scandal from the beginning. Lawyers who worked in previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, questioned whether McGahn had the judgment or influence with his client to do the job.
Four months later, though it has yet to face a crisis not of its own making, the Trump administration faces a growing list of controversies, legal and otherwise. The FBI is reportedly investigating retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served for 22 days as Trump’s national security adviser, on charges Press it On behalf of Turkish interests and for His conversations With the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office. there Two congressional investigations Examine Flynn’s actions Two more Looking into whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign interacted with Vladimir Putin’s regime when it was interfering in the 2016 presidential race. The Justice Department recently specific A special counsel to oversee the FBI’s investigation into Moscow’s interference and Trump-Russia relations. Jared KushnerTrump’s son-in-law and close advisor; Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort; Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael CohenOr face FBI or Congressional scrutiny.
“One feels that Mr. Trump has people talking to him, but he doesn’t take their advice, doesn’t ask for their advice, and doesn’t follow their advice.”
All presidents, Democratic and Republican, face their share of scandals. But the pace and size of the disagreements sweeping the White House during the Trump era are at a different level and pace. (Remember that Saturday Night Massacre committed by Richard Nixon – when he was… Fired The special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal—didn’t happen until nearly five years into his presidency.) And every leak or drop of new information raises more questions about McGahn, the man whose job it is to keep Trump away from potential landmines before they explode In breaking news bombs.
An elections lawyer who served a contentious five years on the Federal Election Commission, McGahn first met Trump in late 2014 and was one of the mogul’s first appointees as he launched his presidential campaign. He endeared himself to Trump by fending off an effort to remove Trump from the primary ballot in New Hampshire and coordinated the campaign’s timely release of a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, a move that helped appeal to ambivalent evangelical and conservative voters.
Shortly after winning the presidency, Trump rewarded McGahn’s loyalty with a bonus Choose him To be a White House advisor.
About six weeks later, on January 4, According to to New York TimesMcGahn spoke with Michael Flynn, the retired general whom Trump picked as national security adviser a week before he appointed McGahn, about a sensitive matter. In August 2016, Flynn’s consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, signed a $600,000 contract to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests. Flynn’s client was a Dutch company run by a Turkish businessman, an ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, at the time, Flynn was not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbyists and advocates who work for foreign governments to disclose their work.
Now, with Trump’s inauguration nearly two weeks away, Flynn has reportedly told McGahn that he is under federal investigation for failing to disclose his lobbying for foreign interests.
What McGahn did with this information is unclear, but it nonetheless reveals to former White House lawyers that Flynn continued to have a senior position in the White House, arguably the most sensitive job in the White House. (McGahn, through a White House spokesman, declined to comment for this story.) Alumni of the former White House Office of Legal Counsel say that it was inconceivable to appoint a national security adviser who would face legal questions related to exercising foreign pressure, let alone an adviser who was under external pressure. Federal investigation. “In the White House counsel’s office where I worked, the idea that there was someone under investigation was a big red flag, and it would be questionable that we would move forward with that person,” says Bill Marshall, a former deputy counsel in the Clinton administration. The white house. “That doesn’t even mean it’s strong enough.”
Flynn reportedly remained in office during the transition He said The outgoing Obama administration has demanded the postponement of a joint US-Kurdish military strike on an ISIS facility in the Syrian city of Raqqa – a move consistent with the wishes of the Turkish government.
In a brief ceremony at the White House on January 22, Flynn was sworn in as national security adviser and McGahn as chief adviser. Four days later, Sally Yates, acting US Attorney General and senior official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, met with McGahn at the White House. Yates informed McGahn of a troubling development: The United States had credible information indicating that Flynn was not telling the truth when he denied that he had discussed sanctions during his conversations with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Yates added that the FBI interviewed Flynn.
Flynn lied. What’s more, his mention of penalties may have been illegal under an obscure law known as the Logan Act. (Since the law was issued in 1799, Not one person He was convicted under the Logan Act.) Yates warned McGahn that the discrepancy between Flynn’s public statements and what he told the Russian ambassador made him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.
“If Sally Yates had come to me with this information, I would have run down the hall like my hair was on fire,” Rob Weiner, another former Clinton White House adviser, told me. Weiner added that because the messenger in this case was a holdover from the Obama administration, the Trump White House “may not have had a lot of confidence in Yates at that point.” However, this should have been something that set off alarm bells. Jack Goldsmith, a former top Justice Department lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, echoed Weiner’s observation. Write in Lawfare websiteGoldsmith commented, “Especially against the backdrop of his knowledge (and apparently doing nothing) of Flynn’s failure to report his work as a foreign agent, the information Yates conveyed should have rung alarm bells loudly.”
Flynn, with two federal investigations hanging over his head, remained in office for another 18 days. He joined Trump in the Oval Office for calls with foreign dignitaries, including the leaders of Australia and Russia. He supposedly attended daily intelligence briefings and had unrestricted access to classified information. That was not until later The Washington Post On February 13th I mentioned Regarding Yates warning McGahn about Flynn’s susceptibility to blackmailing Trump Fired cork.
The looming question over the whole debacle was: How was Flynn allowed to remain in office? At the press conference the day after Flynn’s firing, press secretary Sean Spicer addressed McGahn’s role in the Flynn controversy. McGahn conducted his own review after meeting with Yates and Spicer He explainedHe “decided that there was no legal issue, but rather a question of trust.”
It was a puzzling answer, especially in light of the facts that later came to light: Flynn was allegedly the target of an active investigation. “It is extremely difficult to understand how McGahn was able to reach these conclusions,” wrote Goldsmith, a former Bush administration lawyer. Goldsmith pointed out that McGahn was unable to know all the details of the investigations targeting Flynn. (In fact, Yates later testified that McGahn appeared to not know that the FBI had interviewed Flynn about his communications with the Russian ambassador.) gold. “This call falls primarily on the shoulders of the FBI and especially the Attorney General.”
The steady stream of revelations from the Trump White House and its various legal dramas have cast a harsher light on McGahn and the attorney’s office. after mail I mentioned Goldsmith said White House officials pressured the director of national intelligence and the head of the National Security Agency to downplay the FBI’s Russia investigation. chirp“The question again: Is the WH counselor 1) incompetent or 2) ineffective because the client is crazy and lacks access/influence?”
Lawyers representing Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump is as difficult a client as they could imagine. “One gets the sense that Mr. Trump has people talking to him, but he doesn’t take their advice, doesn’t ask for their advice, and doesn’t follow their advice,” says Karen Holt, a political science professor at the University of Virginia who has studied it. Office of the White House Counsel. Few, if any, presidents have faced more financial and moral complexities than Trump, said C. Boyden Gray, a White House adviser to President George H. W. Bush. “I’ve never had anything close to the complexities that Don McGann had,” he told me earlier this year. Bob Bauer, a former Obama White House counsel, recently He doubted Can any lawyer rein in Trump: “Is White House counsel able to represent this president?” “We may discover that no one is.” There are some signs that Trump trusts McGahn. When Trump wanted to release statements of support for Flynn and Kushner after appointing a special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, that was it. McGann said Who convinced Trump not to do it.
But part of the job, former lawyers at the attorney’s office say, is to offer unwelcome advice to the president and insist that the advice be followed. “It’s always very difficult to say no to the president and not do what the president of the United States wants,” says Bill Marshall, a former Clinton White House lawyer. “But the long-term interests of the president of the United States can often be to not do something that he might want to do, and if you do, he could come back and hit you from a direction you never expected.”