Will Trump White House Counsel McGahn Finally Testify? Will We Get A Third Trump Impeachment?

Enquiring minds, and etc!

After four bugfuck years under Trump — in fact, after the fact of Trump's election itself — your Wonkette is all the way out of the prediction business.

BUT! If we were going to speculate, we'd guess that Trumpland is feeling a bit dyspeptic about a loose end from the Mueller investigation that looks ready to start unraveling. To wit, former White House Counsel Don McGahn finally agreed to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about what he told Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And we already know from the Mueller Report that Don McGahn's testimony adds up to a giant mountain of obstruction of justice by his boss, the 45th president of the United States.

McGahn was first subpoenaed by the House approximately five minutes after Dems took back the gavel in the 2018 midterms. But he refused to repeat those allegations on demand for Congress, citing one of the bullshit privileges cooked up by the Justice Department to stop any of Trump's cronies from spilling the beans on his many crimes. Remember them trying to hot tub time machine themselves back into executive privilege even after they'd already given the goods up to Robert Mueller? Good times!

In August of 2019, House Democrats sued to enforce the subpoena, and two months later a federal district judge in DC ordered McGahn to start talking. On his first go-round on appeal to the DC Circuit, McGahn lucked out, drawing a couple of Bush-appointed judges who felt it was beneath them to adjudicate disputes between the White House and Congress. But when the entire court re-heard the appeal   en banc , the decision was 7-2 in favor of making McGahn spill it.

That was in March of 2020, and we're still fighting about this shit. But according to a status report submitted to the court yesterday it appears that someone has finally tapped out.

The Committee on the Judiciary and the Executive Branch have reached an agreement in principle on an accommodation and anticipate filing, as soon as possible, a joint motion asking the Court to remove this case from the May 19, 2021 oral argument calendar in order to allow the parties to implement the accommodation.

Does that mean that McGahn finally changed his tune now that Merrick Garland's Justice Department is the one making the rules? Did Democrats agree to some of McGahn's preconditions, perhaps agreeing not to ask about communications with Trump that weren't already laid out in the Report? Unclear!

With approximately seventy-seven hearings going on in DC today, the leak machine is running slower than a PC from 1992. All we have so far is a tweet from Rep. Ted Lieu saying, "We look forward to former White House Counsel Don McGahn telling the @HouseJudiciary Committee what he knows."

The only clue we have is a sentence stuck into the status report hinting that Maga-Lago Pisspants is probably going to be NOT HAPPY about it.

"Former President Trump, who is not a party to this case, is not a party to the agreement in principle regarding an accommodation," saith the attorneys from the DOJ and House.

Translation:  No one gives a rat's ass about facially nonsensical invocations of privilege by a guy who no longer controls the Justice Department. 

 Politico's Josh Gerstein reached out to Trump spokesdouche Jason Miller, who did his best to paint his boss as a stalwart defender of sacred presidential privilege, rather than a criminal trying to intimidate a witness against him.

"This case presents important questions concerning confidentiality of communications between the President and his closest advisors and the ability of a House committee to pry into those communications," he said. "President Trump has not agreed to the accommodation arranged in principle by the Biden Administration with the House Judiciary Committee and is evaluating his options for fully protecting the privilege that continues to cover his communications with his closest advisors."

 Blah blah blah. 

Trump can try to keep delaying this testimony by filing yet another bullshit legal challenge, but if McGahn is ready to play ball already, we've probably reached the end of the road.

So, what now? It's not like the House is going to impeach Trump again, right?

Well ...

Let's flesh out a theory that is making the rounds on Ye Old Internette today. Suppose that McGahn does agree to testify to Congress about all Trump's obstruction funtimes . We already know that asshole ordered McGahn to fire Mueller, asked McGahn to lie, tried to interfere in the Manafort investigation, asked James Comey to "go easy" on Flynn, etc. Knowing that the Justice Department wasn't going to indict a sitting president, Mueller just dumped all the evidence in Congress's lap and said, "Here, you guys deal with this." But Trump is no longer a sitting president, and Bill Barr is no longer ratfucking the DOJ.

So, if and when House Dems find evidence of obstruction in McGahn's new testimony and make a referral for criminal prosecution to the current DOJ, what will Attorney General Garland do about it?

The answer is WHO THE HELL KNOWS. But it's definitely an interesting question.

Anyway, here's a Twitter thread laying it all out for your delicious speculation.

Many others said Mueller failed b/c he refused to say that trump criminally obstructed justice. The fact that he di… https: //t.co/gybphyGCQz

— Mueller, She Wrote (@Mueller, She Wrote) 1620787654.0 

Interesting times! But not as interesting as 2017 to 2020, THANK GOD.

[ Politico / Status Report ]

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