The White House has been briefed on the Mueller report and “there is significant concern on the president’s team about what will be in this report,” and “what worries them most is what Don McGahn told the special counsel,” @jonkarl reports on @ThisWeekABC https://t.co/2gNCrsGh2B pic.twitter.com/do39TZFBZz
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 14, 2019
President Donald Trump‘s team are worried most about what former White House Counsel Don McGahn might have told Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 30-plus hours of interviews, according to ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jon Karl.
McGahn “has visibility on all of this,” Karl said on a Sunday episode of This Week. He added that he was told the discussions lasted much more than 30 hours.
“And here’s the astounding thing,’ Karl said. “After all of that time before the special counsel, nobody on the president’s legal team debriefed McGahn about what he was asked by the special counsel, or what he told the special counsel. So the bottom line is they really don’t know.”
President Donald Trump declared victory when according to his attorney general William Barr, Mueller’s report didn’t establish collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. The special counsel, however, apparently punted on whether POTUS committed obstruction of justice, and Barr said there wasn’t enough evidence to support such a charge.
Skeptics want to see the whole report, not the AG’s summary, however. Barr said in a hearing on Tuesday that a redacted version would be released “within a week.”
McGahn, who left the White House last October, reportedly seems pretty confident that he’ll make an appearance in the final product.
“I spent the last couple of years getting yelled at,” he said at an off-the-record lunch, according to sources for Axios. “And you may soon read about some of the more spirited debates I had with the president.”
He didn’t cite the Mueller report by name, but sources said that’s what he seemed to mean.
It’s worth mentioning that Trump wanted to order the Department of Justice to prosecute former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and fired FBI Director James Comey, but McGahn told him he couldn’t do it and shouldn’t even request an investigation, according to sources in a New York Times report last November.
“Mr. McGahn will not comment on his legal advice to the president,” McGahn’s attorney William A. Burck told the outlet. “Like any client, the president is entitled to confidentiality. Mr. McGahn would point out, though, that the president never, to his knowledge, ordered that anyone prosecute Hillary Clinton or James Comey.”
[Image via Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images]
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