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>This image was removed due to legal reasons. President Donald Trump must be very concerned about what former White House counsel Don McGahn will tell Congress. Advertisement McGahn was a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, having spent over 30 hours in interviews with Mueller. Mueller’s report, released last month, describes efforts by Trump to have McGahn call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to convince him to fire the special counsel—barely a month after Mueller was appointed. McGahn called Trump’s request “crazy shit” and threatened to quit rather than carry out the order. When The New York Times reported about the incident in January 2018, Trump wanted McGahn to publicly dispute the newspaper’s reporting. Again, McGahn refused. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported another detail of the president’s ongoing obstruction saga involving McGahn, who has once again rebuffed Trump. According to the newspaper, a day after the release of the Mueller report, Trump wanted McGahn to publicly state that the president’s directive in 2017 to fire Mueller didn’t amount to obstruction of justice. The president sent his request via special counsel Emmet Flood, who approached McGahn’s attorney, William Burck. Burck said, “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister. It was a request, professionally and cordially made,” the Journal reported. Per the story: Mr. McGahn turned down the request because he didn’t want to weigh in on the totality of evidence in the report beyond his own testimony, and didn’t want to comment on his own testimony in isolation, the people said. Mr. McGahn also didn’t view his personal opinion as relevant, because Attorney General William Barr had already said he didn’t believe the evidence in Mr. Mueller’s report amounted to obstruction of justice, the people said. Advertisement In other words, you’ve got your consigliere in Attorney General Barr, Mr. Trump, so leave me alone. McGahn is caught in the middle of a battle between the House Judiciary Committee and the White House. On Tuesday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent letters to McGahn’s attorney and to House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler arguing that documents Nadler had subpoenaed from McGahn would violate executive branch confidentiality and executive privilege. Advertisement Nadler responded by telling Burck that the committee would vote to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress if he fails to appear to testify on May 21. The House Judiciary Committee also wants Mueller to testify, and was hoping he might do so on May 15. However, that date hasn’t been confirmed, and it increasingly appears that it might not happen next week. Advertisement As for Trump, he initially said the decision about whether Mueller should testify to Congress is up to Barr. The next day, Trump tweeted, “Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!”<doc-sep>CEO of ADL: Seeing a 'blitzkrieg of anti-Jewish' acts across US Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Why GOP is standing in the way of Capitol riot investigation WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Hear what Matt Gaetz said about Paul Ryan before his speech Former GOP senator: If McConnell said this, 'it's shameful' 'Some people have no shame': Biden calls out GOP lawmakers with list (CNN) — The White House requested that former White House counsel Don McGahn publicly state that President Donald Trump didn’t obstruct justice, but McGahn declined, an administration official told CNN on Friday. The timing of the White House’s request – which was made to McGahn’s attorney William Burck through top White House lawyer Emmet Flood, according to the official – is unclear. The official and a separate source familiar with the matter said that McGahn previously told special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators he didn’t believe Trump obstructed justice. The episode speaks to the White House’s efforts to portray the President as absolved by the redacted Mueller report since its release last month. The Wall Street Journal first reported the White House’s appeal to McGahn. A source familiar with Flood’s call to Burck conveying the request said Trump was upset by McGahn’s refusal to state publicly that the President did not obstruct justice. Burck asserted Friday that McGahn’s team did not interpret the request as “any kind of threat.” “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister,” Burck said in a statement. “It was a request, professionally and cordially made.” The separate source familiar with the matter said the issue was moot once Trump directed a tweet at McGahn the day after the Mueller report was released. The President tweeted a warning that day against “people that take so-called ‘notes,’ ” echoing his criticism of McGahn for taking notes, which was referenced in the Mueller report. The source added that McGahn and his lawyer didn’t think that such a public statement was necessary because Attorney General Bill Barr had already come out and said Trump didn’t obstruct justice. Flood’s request to McGahn was not the first overture by the administration in pursuit of such a statement, according to The New York Times. The White House first reached out to Burck after Trump’s lawyers reviewed the Mueller report prior to its public release and realized that McGahn’s testimony to investigators that he didn’t believe Trump obstructed justice did not appear in the report, the paper reported. Sources could not confirm to CNN that Flood made two calls to Burck. Administration officials thought that having McGahn make such a statement publicly would assuage Trump and buttress the White House’s narrative combating the Mueller report’s assessment of specific instances of potential obstruction, a person briefed on the White House’s requests to McGahn told the Times. Trump again denied on Saturday that he was going to fire Mueller and argued that the special counsel was allowed to finish his report “with unprecedented help from the Trump Administration.” “Actually, lawyer Don McGahn had a much better chance of being fired than Mueller. Never a big fan!” Trump wrote on Twitter. Barr told Congress before the report’s release that Mueller did not come to a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice and that Barr and Rosenstein had concluded that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” In the redacted report released later, Mueller indicated that the investigation into possible obstruction of justice could not clear Trump. The White House complained to Barr that Mueller should have made a decision on whether Trump obstructed justice. CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
Don McGahn, a former White House counsel named in the Mueller report’s section on potential obstruction of justice by the Trump administration, rejected a request from President Trump to publicly declare that he doesn’t believe Trump obstructed justice. McGahn, who left the Trump White House in 2018, provided Robert Mueller’s team with 30 hours of testimony over the course of the special counsel’s investigation into links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign and potential obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. As Vox’s Aaron Rupar explained, McGahn told Mueller the president asked him to fire the special counsel, something McGahn refused to do: McGahn told Mueller that in June 2017 — one month after Mueller’s appointment — the president reacted to reports that Mueller was investigating him for obstruction of justice by calling him at home and “direct[ing] him to call the Acting Attorney General and say that the Special Counsel had conflict 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.” In January 2018, the New York Times reported that Trump ordered McGahn to have the Justice Department fire Mueller the previous June. According to what McGahn told Mueller, Trump reacted to the report by asking McGahn to fabricate evidence that could be used to refute it. “The President then directed [then-White House official Rob] Porter to tell McGahn to create a record to make clear that the President never directed McGahn to fire the Special Counsel,” the report says. “McGahn shrugged off the request, explaining that the media reports were true.” This incident was further investigated by Mueller, and was eventually included in his report as one of 10 times Trump may have obstructed justice. Following the release of the Mueller report last month, the president wanted McGahn to publicly state that he did not consider the request to remove Mueller from the Russia investigation obstruction of justice, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal report. McGahn refused to do so. “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister,” William Burck, McGahn’s personal attorney, said. “It was a request, professionally and cordially made.” Sources told the Journal that McGahn had several reasons for deciding not to make the statement. First, he felt he had said everything he needed to say on the matter in his testimony to Mueller. Second, he didn’t want to further comment on that testimony, particularly in a brief way. Third, he felt any comment he could have made had already been rendered meaningless by Attorney General William Barr’s decision that the “evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” McGahn is a central figure in a subpoena fight between the Trump and Democrats One Trump administration request McGahn has honored was refusing to comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena last week. The committee wants McGahn to turn over documents from his time as White House counsel. The White House does not want these documents released to the committee, or anyone else, and Pat Cipollone, the current White House counsel, said that any documents in McGahn’s possession are protected by Trump’s executive privilege. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the committee, disagreed with this assessment and threatened to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress. The House Judiciary Committee has already voted to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt. “Mr. McGahn is required to appear and provide testimony before the committee absent a court order authorizing noncompliance, as well as provide a privilege log for any documents withheld,” Nadler said Tuesday. “Otherwise, the committee will have no choice but to resort to contempt proceedings to ensure that it has access to the information it requires to fulfill its constitutionally mandated duties.” McGahn was expected to testify before Congress on May 21, but it is not clear if his hearing will go on as planned. Trump has dismissed congressional investigations into his administration as politically driven and has instructed his subordinates to ignore subpoenas on more than 30 separate occasions. “There is no reason to go any further,” Trump told the Washington Post. “Especially in Congress where it’s very partisan.”