Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation. The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for...

WASHINGTON — Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh sat in the anteroom of Room 216 in the Hart Senate Office Building, a sterile, living-room-like space with a couch and a couple of armchairs and a large television on the wall. His chances of joining the Supreme Court seemed to be vanishing. “Disaster,” read the text message from one Republican. Christine Blasey Ford had just finished testifying that he had tried to force himself on her as a teenager, and nearly everyone in both camps found her credible, sincere and sympathetic. President Trump called Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, and they agreed...

WASHINGTON — An exasperated President Trump picked up the phone to call the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, last Sunday. Tell the F.B.I. they can investigate anything, he told Mr. McGahn, because we need the critics to stop. Not so fast, Mr. McGahn said. Mr. McGahn, according to people familiar with the conversation, told the president that even though the White House was facing a storm of condemnation for limiting the F.B.I. background check into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a wide-ranging inquiry like some Democrats were demanding — and Mr. Trump was suggesting —...

A replacement has already been chosen to take over for White House counsel Don McGahn when he leaves that post in the fall, according to a Thursday morning tweet from President Trump. “I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel!" Trump wrote. McGahn would be leaving the White House following the confirmation of his Supreme Court nomination, Brett Kavanaugh. Trump added that he does not credit McGahn with stopping him from firing special counsel Robert Mueller or Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "I liked Don, but he was NOT...

Below is a tweet from Dr. Gorka. I'm not making the connection and his response is at the bottom. Is McGahn exit going to open things up? What would he be holding back or not allowing to happen? He told another poster to think about it.

White House counsel Don McGahn will be leaving the White House amid a flurry of ongoing investigations into the president's associates. Mr. Trump tweeted on Wednesday news of McGahn's departure, which is set to take place sometime this fall.

Donald Trump has a credibility problem, but so do the media. A case in point is the weekend story that White House counsel Don McGahn has cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller. Let’s try to navigate through this Beltway Hall of Mirrors. The thesis of the New York Times story is that Mr. McGahn cooperated in a way that could hurt Donald Trump in order to protect himself and because he doesn’t trust the President. This fits the media narrative that Mr. Trump is covering up his collusion with Russia and his obstruction of justice, and thus Mr. McGahn must...

The White House counsel has figured out how to appear transparent without giving Mueller the information he needs. Has Don McGahn turned on Donald Trump? On Saturday, the New York Times published a lengthy story suggesting as much, hinting that the White House counsel may have reached the limits of his loyalty to the president. Reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt detail McGahn’s assistance to Mueller’s Russia probe, including 30 hours of voluntary interviews with investigators. Trump, they write, allowed McGahn to speak to Mueller’s team, though the president may not have grasped the extent of his cooperation.

White House counsel Donald McGahn has been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to an explosive New York Times report published Saturday. McGahn has reportedly discussed accounts of multiple episodes at the center of Mueller's probe into whether President Trump obstructed justice. Sources told the Times that McGahn has had three voluntary interviews with Mueller's team totaling 30 hours. Among the episodes McGahn reportedly discussed with investigators is Trump’s firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and the president's repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff...

White House counsel Don McGahn last summer recused his entire office from handling special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe because many of his staff attorneys had been "significant participants" in events Mueller is investigating, including the firing of FBI Director James Comey and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, former White House attorney Ty Cobb said Wednesday during a panel discussion at George Mason. "The White House made a decision to recuse his entire office," Cobb said, according to Politico. Cobb retired at the end of May and was replaced by Emmet Flood, a veteran defense attorney who has deep experience...

Investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller are scheduled to interview additional senior White House officials in the coming weeks, adding to their list of high-profile interviews and pushing the investigation closer to President Donald Trump and his family. On the slate are White House communications director Hope Hicks, White House counsel Don McGahn and Josh Raffel, a communications aide to White House senior adviser Jared Kushner. Other staff are also expected to be interviewed.

Rep. Darrell Issa's demand follows CNN report of contact between the IRS and FEC House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa demanded Wednesday that the Federal Election Commission turn over records of more than five years of communications with the Internal Revenue Service -- a move that significantly expands the California Republican's ongoing probe of alleged federal targeting of conservative groups. In a letter to FEC Chairman Ellen Weintraub -- a Democrat -- Issa cited CNN reporting on Monday that raises "the prospect of inappropriate coordination between the IRS and the FEC about tax-exempt entities." Among other things, Issa asked for...

A senior White House official tells the New York Times that White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn is now searching for a FISA warrant – or series of warrants – allegedly issued in an Obama-era investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to a shifty Russian bank. The official says that McGahn’s office wants access to any order, issued by the ultra-secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, relating to President Trump, his campaign, or his immediate associates. Those documents are usually only available to law enforcement, and while the White House has the authority to request the documents, they typically don’t – largely...

White House attorney Ty Cobb was overheard talking about the Russia probe and some of his colleagues at a Washington steakhouse by a New York Times reporter, the publication reported Sunday night. Cobb, who was hired to oversee the White House's legal and media response to the investigation into Russian meddling, was heard talking openly about the Russia investigation with John Dowd, a Washington lawyer with experience in high-profile political cases. "The White House counsel's office is being very conservative with this stuff," Cobb reportedly told Dowd at BLT Steak in Washington last week. "Our view is we're not hiding...

President Trump drops another Mother Of All Bombs, this time in a twitter version directly targeted at a corrupted and politicized James Comey Dept. of Justice. And whatÂ’s more stunning in the aftershock is the mediaÂ’s incapacity to take the new Trump/Comey timeline information and add it to the existing Sally Yates timeline. Then again, to do so would be to expose another level of FBI/DOJ politicization that remains hidden from public consumption. Another political operative, Asst. Director of Counter Intelligence, Bill Priestap, who accompanied acting AG Sally Yates to the meeting with White House Counsel Don McGahn, is a...

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named a libertarian election lawyer as his White House counsel and a hard-line former Reagan administration official to a top post on his national security staff. Trump announced that Donald McGahn, a controversial former member of the Federal Election Commission who had served as Trump's campaign lawyer, will be his White House counsel. (snip) For deputy national security adviser, Trump chose Kathleen "KT" McFarland, who in her most recent role as a Fox News analyst has expressed strident opposition to many of President Obama's national security policies.

President-elect Donald Trump has named Donald McGahn as White House counsel and assistant to the president.