White House Asked McGahn to Say Trump Didn't Obstruct Justice, but McGahn Declined
White House Asked McGahn to Say Trump Didn't Obstruct Justice, but McGahn Declined
Sources told the Wall Street Journal that McGahn declined the request delivered by current White House special counsel Emmet Flood.
“We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister. It was a request, professionally and cordially made," McGahn's lawyer, William Burck, said in a statement.
In a follow-up, the New York Times reported McGahn also declined a request to publicly say he believed there was no obstruction before the Mueller report was released. The Times reported that Trump's lawyers saw that Mueller's report left out that McGahn told investigators that he did not believe obstruction of justice had taken place as Burck had told them months earlier.
The White House has yet to react to the news reports.
The report, released last month with redactions, Mueller details 10 instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, including ordering McGahn to fire Mueller. The report said McGahn resisted and went so far as to pack up his belongings at the White House and inform his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, to tell her of the decision. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus, however, pushed him not to quit, and McGahn did not leave his post at the White House until late 2018.
Another instance of possible obstruction examined said that following media reports in January 2018 — which the president said were “fake news” — that said Trump directed McGahn to have Mueller fired, the president attempted on multiple occasions to have McGahn deny he was told to do so. The report said McGahn shrugged off a request from the president to write a letter disputing he was ordered by Trump to fire the special counsel and told the president during an Oval Office meeting that press accounts were accurate.
No comments:
Your View