The White House asked former White House counsel Don McGahn to say publicly that he did not believe that President Trump obstructed justice, Fox News confirmed Friday -- although McGahn’s attorney said they never perceived the request as a threat. “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister. It was a request, professionally and cordially made,” McGahn’s attorney William Burck said in a statement. WHITE HOUSE BLOCKS MCGAHN FROM PRODUCING DOCUMENTS SUBPOENAED BY HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE The Wall Street Journal first reported that White House officials made the request to McGahn, but that McGahn declined -- purportedly because he didn’t want to weigh in on the evidence in the report beyond his own testimony, and did not want to comment on his own testimony in isolation. The request, made by White House lawyer Emmett Flood, came after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report last month. The report did not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and did not come to a conclusion on whether President Trump obstructed justice. However, it did outline a number of controversial actions and requests made by the president that were examined as part of Mueller’s obstruction inquiry. One of those examples Mueller outlines was an instance in which Trump called McGahn and told him to have Mueller fired. McGahn is said to have ignored that request. “On June 17, 2017, the president called [White House Counsel Don] McGahn at home and directed him to call the Acting Attorney General and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre,” the report stated, referencing the Watergate scandal. The report also said that when media outlets reported the president’s request for McGahn to have Mueller removed, the president directed White House officials “to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a record stating he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed.” TRUMP TELLS DEMS 'IT'S OVER,' SAYS MCGAHN WON'T TESTIFY “McGahn refused to back away from what he remembered happening,” the report said. Trump has denied the claim that he told McGahn to fire Mueller “even though I had the legal right to do so.” “If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself,” he tweeted. Democrats have quickly seized on the examples as proof that Trump did in fact obstruct justice, and have pushed for further investigations. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn to appear before the panel to testify and provide documents related to the Mueller probe, but the White House this week said it had ordered McGahn defy the subpoena and not appear for testimony. “The White House provided these records to Mr. McGahn in connection with its cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation and with the clear understanding that the records remain subject to the control of the White House for all purposes,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. “The White House records remain legally protected from disclosure under longstanding constitutional principles, because they implicate significant Executive Branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege,” he said. The fight comes amid a broader battle between congressional Democrats and the White House over documents and testimony related to the Mueller report. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voted this week to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for his refusal to hand over the full, unredacted report to Congress and the underlying evidence in response to a committee subpoena. “We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice,” Nadler said after the vote. "We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The White House on Wednesday announced that President Trump had asserted executive privilege over the documents in a bid to protect them from release, criticizing Nadler’s “blatant abuse of power.” "The Attorney General has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report to the public and offering to testify before the Committee. These attempts to work with the Committee have been flatly rejected. They didn’t like the results of the report, and now they want a redo," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement Wednesday. Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON — White House officials asked at least twice in the past month for the key witness against President Trump in the Mueller report, Donald F. McGahn II, to say publicly that he never believed the president obstructed justice, according to two people briefed on the requests. Mr. Trump asked White House officials to make the request to Mr. McGahn, who was the president’s first White House counsel, one of the people said. Mr. McGahn declined. His reluctance angered the president, who believed that Mr. McGahn showed disloyalty by telling investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the Russia investigation. [Update: Federal judge rules that Donald McGahn must testify before Congress.] The White House made one of the requests to Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck, before the Mueller report was released publicly but after the Justice Department gave a copy to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the preceding days. Reading the report, the president’s lawyers saw that Mr. Mueller left out that Mr. McGahn had told investigators that he believed the president never obstructed justice. Mr. Burck had told them months earlier about his client’s belief on the matter and that he had shared it with investigators. Mr. McGahn initially entertained the White House request. “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister,” Mr. Burck said in a statement. “It was a request, professionally and cordially made.” A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment.<doc-sep>President Trump attempted to have former White House counsel Don McGahn publicly state that he didn’t view the president’s request to have special counsel Robert Mueller removed in 2017 as obstruction of justice just days after the Mueller report was released, The Wall Street Journal reports. While McGahn is said to have rebuffed the request, it would mark at least the second time the president or one of his lawyers allegedly asked McGahn to publicly vouch for Trump amid scrutiny of potential obstruction of justice. When The New York Times first reported in 2018 that Trump had urged McGahn to have Mueller removed, Trump’s personal lawyer asked McGahn to publicly dispute the claim, which he declined to do, according to the redacted version of the 448-page Mueller report. Within a day of the release of that report, Trump again sought to have McGahn clear him of suspicions by privately asking Emmet Flood, the White House special counsel, to reach out to McGahn and ask if he would release a statement declaring that he didn’t view Trump’s request for Mueller’s removal as obstruction, according to sources cited by the Journal. Trump has denied publicly that he ever asked McGahn to fire Mueller, though the alleged directive was featured in Mueller’s report. The report detailed a June 2017 episode in which McGahn testified that Trump asked him to have Mueller removed from the Russia probe, allegedly urging him to tell then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that “Mueller has to go.” Trump was said to have talked about “knocking out Mueller” to McGahn on at least two separate occasions in the report. The episode was widely seen as ammunition for any potential obstruction of justice charges against the president. Sources cited by the Journal also say that Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow reached out to McGahn’s lawyer, William Burck, during the Russia investigation to inquire about McGahn’s testimony to Mueller. John Dowd, who was in charge of Trump’s legal efforts, had also reportedly gotten in touch with Burck to ask about the same matter. The revelation that Trump reportedly attempted to have McGahn make a statement on the record after the Mueller report was released comes after the White House reportedly instructed McGahn to eschew a subpoena from lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week. Burck, McGahn's lawyer, told the Journal the latest request from Trump was not seen “as any kind of threat or something sinister.” “It was a request, professionally and cordially made,” he was quoted as saying.<doc-sep>
White House officials asked the former White House counsel Don McGahn at least twice in the past month to publicly say he did not believe President Donald Trump obstructed justice, The New York Times reported. McGahn declined the requests. McGahn's lawyer told The Times they did not view the overtures as a "threat" or "something sinister," adding that they were "professionally and cordially made." White House officials reportedly believed that if McGahn said publicly that he did not believe Trump obstructed justice, it would help them push back on the special counsel Robert Mueller's findings in the Russia probe. Mueller declined to make a decision on whether Trump obstructed justice, but his team laid out an extensive road map of evidence against the president and emphasized that "based on the facts and the applicable legal standards," they could not exonerate Trump. White House officials asked Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, to publicly say he did not believe President Donald Trump obstructed justice at least twice in the past month. McGahn declined. "We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister," McGahn's lawyer William Burck told The New York Times, which first reported the news on Friday. "It was a request, professionally and cordially made." One of the requests to McGahn came before the special counsel Robert Mueller's report in the Russia investigation was released but after the Justice Department sent an advance copy of the document to the White House, The Times reported. Officials are said to have believed that if McGahn publicly stated that Trump did not try to thwart the investigation, it would calm the president and help his lawyers dispute some of the instances of potential obstruction that Mueller detailed in his report. INSIDER reached out to Burck to ask why McGahn declined the request if he did not view it as a "threat" or "something sinister." Burck did not immediately reply.