Bombshell: White House Counsel Has Been Cooperating Extensively With Mueller

Ticktockticktock...

The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter. 

In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer. 

Among them were Mr. Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and Mr. Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it. Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which investigators might not have discovered without him. 

For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual. Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege. (our emphasis)

Oh, and we have a new "presidential" nickname:

... Mr. Trump’s behavior has so exasperated Mr. McGahn that he has called the president “King Kong” behind his back, to connote his volcanic anger, people close to Mr. McGahn said. (our emphasis)

So yes, the resemblance is more than skin deep:

(Composite image via Raw Story)

Now, it's always possible McGahn is providing information that would be exculpatory to Tr...hahahaha no:

Worried that Mr. Trump would ultimately blame him in the inquiry, Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of the White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, who was imprisoned in the Watergate scandal. 

Mr. McGahn decided to fully cooperate with Mr. Mueller. It was, he believed, the only choice he had to protect himself. (our emphasis)

The timing of this revelation could suggest that the portion of the Mueller probe dealing with obstruction of justice is very close to completion, and that McGahn's cooperation would have been exposed shortly anyway.

The walls, they are closing in fast. Time to distract pull a security clearance!

BONUS:  Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes summarizes --

Boomhttps://t.co/W0mBWLOYVm pic.twitter.com/d1GWoY6HXB

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 18, 2018

"L'etat c'est Trump" -- A Sampler

As you may be well aware by now, the New York Times received a copy of a 20- page letter sent by lawyers for un- indicted co- conspirator Donald "Rump" Trump to the Special Counsel back in January.  The letter essentially claimed that Rump had the absolute power to 1) terminate any criminal investigation and, therefore, 2) can't by definition be charged with obstruction of justice. This unprecedented assertion of absolute, self- interested presidential power is clearly being made by lawyers for a person who is completely innocent of any crimes or treason bull- horning his consciousness of guilt.  A sampling of comments we've seen:

Jonathan Chait

For most of Donald Trump’s presidency, the specter of a coming constitutional crisis has loomed over the Russia investigation. The newly leaked memo by Trump’s lawyers, obtained by the New York Times, suggests that such a crisis is not merely a likelihood, but that it has already begun. 

The memo proposes several tendentious interpretations of the publicly available facts of Trump’s behavior, along with some legally questionable and amateurish citations of precedent. But the most important passage is its sweeping assertion of presidential authority.

Ruth Marcus

Of course the president oversees the executive branch, including the Justice Department. Of course he gets to set broad contours of policy. But there is a long and wise tradition of presidential reticence to interfere in individual criminal matters — no less in a criminal matter that affects himself. And the notion that the president could peremptorily call off any prosecution for any reason whatsoever — no matter how corrupt — would be laughable if it weren’t so scary. 

As Daniel Hemer and Eric Posner write in the California Law Review, “No one thinks that . . . the president should be able to commit a crime and then call off the investigation of it. What if he murdered his valet?”

Steve Schmidt (Republican strategist)

A clear line has been drawn with the release of Trumps legal memo. Make no mistake, it is a direct attack on the rule of law and a declaration of absolute power on the part of the President. It’s thesis must be attacked relentlessly. The American Republic is worth fighting for.

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) June 2, 2018

Tom Sullivan on the incompetence of Rump's legal eagles

The Trump legal team cites an obsolete obstruction statute in making their case, proving he got what he paid for (if indeed he has), just as Trump voters got the vain amateur for which they yearned. Congress broadened the obstruction statute in 2002, the Times reports. Even under the obsolete one, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, then senator from Alabama, and over 40 of his peers in Congress voted to remove Bill Clinton from office for obstructing justice in an investigation Clinton never asserted the power to end...

Matthew Yglesias

Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away. You could call it “The Trump Hotel” or maybe bundle a room to stay in along with the legal impunity. 

Having cut your check, you’d then have carte blanche to commit bank fraud or dump toxic waste in violation of the Clean Water Act or whatever else you want to do. Tony Soprano could get the feds off his case, and so could the perpetrators of the next Enron fraud or whatever else. 

We're dealing with a criminal organization, from the Rump family to its associates in the Republican Party. Their aim is to run the rule of law and every norm of a democratic society into the ground after they've pilfered from the till.  While we wait for further moves from the Special Counsel, our hope (as distant as it seems) is the ballot in November.

BONUS:  Infidel points us to another good read on the Opus Dopus.

BONUS II:

Short analysis of Trump lawyers’ ultimate defense: So what if he is guilty of obstruction, collusion, kleptocracy, money laundering. The president can do anything he wants, and he can pardon himself for anything he did before he was president.

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) June 2, 2018

Trump's Failed Game Of Chicken With Mueller

With the news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian manipulation of the 2016 elections has broadened into obstruction of justice and corrupt financial dealings of the associates of demagogue and pathological liar Donald "Rump" Trump, barely concealed panic has enveloped his White (Supremacist) House staff. Knowing Rump's mental volatility, some of the staff are concerned that, despite strong warnings to leave Mueller in place, he' won't. Said one nervous official about Rump's hints that he may fire Mueller, “I’d be insincere if I said it wasn’t a concern that the president would try to do it anyway.”

In particular, the financial crimes aspect of the broadened investigation may be the key to why Rump has been so recklessly protective of his friends here (Michael Flynn in particular) and in Moscow. Money laundering by Russian oligarchs close to Putin may be the link to the Trump Organization that holds the key to understanding why Rump is so solicitous of the Kremlin. Follow the money, remember?

Rump's failed Mueller gambit?

... The president was pleased by the ambiguity of his position on Mr. Mueller, and thinks the possibility of being fired will focus the veteran prosecutor on delivering what the president desires most: a blanket public exoneration.

Yeah, that'd work with Mueller, you delusional dumbass.

The incomparable Charles P. Pierce sums up Rump's dire predicament in an article today:

"[Mueller] isn't some roofing specialist that you can stiff and then drag through the courts until he can't afford the trip any more. He isn't someone you can scare off with your usual gang of billable-hour button men. He isn't some dingy Russian banker who can float you a loan to tide you over. He is honest and respected and relentless, and the only way you're going to get rid of him is to fire him. In a way, the country is daring you to do that, just to see if you have the stones for what comes next, and (possibly) as the last excuse it needs to insist on a new president. Go ahead. Make our day." (emphasis added)

The lengths to which Rump is protecting his Russian ties are an indication of how compromising -- and probably illegal -- those ties are.