Neil Eggleston. If that name is unfamiliar, Eggleston was the White House counsel for Barack Obama for the last three years of his administration. During those three years, Eggleston became known for his personal actions on … nothing. Absolutely nothing.
On the other hand, during his short time in the White House, Don McGahn has become something just short of a household name. It was McGahn who sent a memo to Jeff Sessions asking that Sessions not recuse himself from the Russia investigation. McGahn who informed Donald Trump that Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI. McGahn who leaned on the FBI to get rid of Andrew McCabe.
And he’s one of the people who intentionally allowed Rob Porter to hang around the White House months after the FBI sent over reports to the White House Personnel Security Office.
"This would have been sent to McGahn’s desk as soon as the personnel office heard about it," said a former administration official who dealt with hiring staff in the Obama White House.
Further, the experts said, it would normally be McGahn’s responsibility to alert the president and chief of staff that Porter was not fit to receive classified information.
Don McGahn is always in the news, because he’s Donald Trump’s hit man—the guy who Trump turns to when he wants a tissue-thin excuse that he’s not to blame for his own actions. And that’s especially true for everything related to Trump’s attempts to impede the Russia investigation.
[McGahn] has served as an adviser, a participant and most recently a witness in the continuing Russia investigation — a complex role that puts him at the center of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s examination of whether Trump sought to obstruct justice.
The White House counsel is not supposed to be Trump’s personal attorney, much less his instrument for carrying out obstruction. But that’s exactly the role that McGahn is playing.
“It’s a complicated relationship,” said one person close to McGahn, referring to Trump and his counsel. “I don’t think Trump dislikes him. . . . But the big problem between them is that Trump has always seen lawyers as facilitators for him. He doesn’t see lawyers as people who say no to him.” The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Russia investigation.
Which hasn’t been a frequent problem. The only time that McGahn has reportedly said no to Trump, was when Trump ordered him to fire Robert Mueller—a move that McGahn felt was so legally suspect that both he and Trump would suffer if he did what Trump requested. The Washington Post notes that McGahn is frequently in conflict with Trump’s blue-skies-ahead personal attorney, Ty Cobb.
McGahn has told others that Cobb is not a careful lawyer and is not carefully reviewing documents or preparing people to testify. In private conversations, McGahn has questioned whether Cobb leaked stories to the news media that could imperil McGahn’s standing in the White House. Cobb declined to comment.
But the bigger point here is … why does McGahn care? Protecting Trump from his own actions, preparing witnesses to talk to Mueller, none of that is McGahn’s job. Or it’s not supposed to be.
Maybe it’s because his own connection to the Russia investigation goes beyond simply protecting Trump. McGahn was involved through the whole campaign, back into the primaries. He, like Sessions and Jared Kushner, isn’t just someone who came into the White House after the inauguration. He was there for the whole affair. And since moving into the White House, his actions from the beginning have been an instrument for protecting Trump over finding out the truth.
McGahn first became entangled in the Russia investigation when acting attorney general Sally Yates wanted to warn the White House in January 2017 that its national security adviser was potentially susceptible to Russian blackmail because he had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. She passed that message to McGahn.
The White House has said McGahn conducted his own review to determine whether the adviser, Michael Flynn, had acted illegally, ultimately concluding he had not.
Instead, the next person to leave was Sally Yates. From his very first action, McGahn acted to protect Flynn—who has since admitted his guilt—and to back the DOJ. He acted to protect Porter, despite the evidence from the FBI. And he’s acted to protect both Trump and himself.
The role of the White House counsel is to advise the administration on legal aspects of policies and legislation, and to answer ethical questions including financial disclosures and conflicts of interest. It’s the role of the office to draw a line between White House business and personal business. Protecting any member of the White House staff from investigation or evidence produced by the FBI or DOJ is not part of the job.