Hurray! Another journalist has surfaced to help us see through the smokescreen created by this weekend’s Maggie & Mike “McGahnObtructapalooza.” Appearing in Slate, Mark Joseph Stern pens: Don McGahn Has Not Turned on Trump, The White House counsel has figured out how to appear transparent without giving Mueller the information he needs.
Most of the media is parroting Maggie & Mike’s tribute to Don McGahn (their likely source), casting McGahn as a honorable cooperating witness. Stern digs deeper, refutes this simple minded analysis and describes clearly and concisely how McGahn is actually using our favorite two New York Times access reporters to push out a false narrative. A fanciful version that casts his role in the most favorable light, as well as trains the public focus on obstruction, rather than the underlying crimes of conspiracy and campaign violations.
In short, Trump’s legal advisers do not believe that obstruction-related inquiries can legally endanger the president. It’s no surprise, then, that McGahn would speak with Mueller’s team about the events that lie behind a potential obstruction charge. The bigger mystery is whether he spoke to the special counsel about matters beyond obstruction—specifically, about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the actual focus of Mueller’s probe.
Indeed, McGahn may have other more personal reasons for trying to steer the investigation away from underlying criminal matters. Stern writes:
As Marcy Wheeler pointed out on Saturday, this single passage is the most telling in the whole article. There are, Wheeler noted, at least three ways in which Russian collusion might have involved campaign finance violations. McGahn, a former FEC commissioner, is a campaign finance expert, and he served as Trump’s campaign counsel through the 2016 election. In that capacity, he was presumably involved in the campaign’s hiring of British Cambridge Analytica employees, a move that raised the possibility of improper foreign contributions. McGahn may have been aware of the infamous meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign officials to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, running afoul of campaign finance rules. And McGahn may have failed to wall off Roger Stone from the campaign as Stone allegedly bypassed election laws to seek more dirt on Clinton from foreigners. (Mueller is keenly interested in Stone’s work for the campaign.)
Stern wonders if McGahn was as forthcoming with Mueller on these matters:
The real test of McGahn’s candor will arrive if, and when, Mueller asks to speak to him about the campaign. At that point, McGahn could raise attorney-client privilege, since he represented Trump at the time, triggering a genuine conflict with the special counsel.
So, you see, McGahn may not be selfless warrior for justice that Maggie & Mike’s tour de force of access journalism has triumphed.
A big thank you to Mark Joseph Stern for blowing away some of the smoke!
Read the entire Slate article…
UPDATED ANALYSIS:
Several comments below disagree with the thesis of this article. They state some version of the following from Timaeus:
Nonsense. From top to bottom. If McGahn spoke for THIRTY HOURS with Mueller’s team, there’s no way he didn’t give Trump to the wolves.
or from thenekkidtruth:
Which leaves only one possibility which would make this Slate supposition true, and that’s McGahn fell on his sword to protect Trump. Another word for that is perjury, and no, the highest possible probably is that perjury didn’t happen.
or Bobs Telecaster:
Giving a deposition under oath? You’ve got to tell the truth. And for thirty hours, he did so. Trust me — the special counsel would not waste that much time on a dead end… he's a lawyer. Lawyers bill by the minute in private practice.
and we have Andrew F Cockburn:
Giving a deposition under oath? You’ve got to tell the truth. And for thirty hours, he did so. Trust me — the special counsel would not waste that much time on a dead end… he's a lawyer. Lawyers bill by the minute in private practice.
Never-the-less we have another story, this time from the Washington Post: McGahn does not believe he implicated Trump in legal wrongdoing in special counsel interviews, his attorney tells president’s legal team
White House counsel Donald McGahn does not believe that he implicated President Trump in any legal wrongdoing in extensive interviews he has given the special counsel, McGahn’s attorney told Trump’s legal team in recent days.
So, it gets confusing. How is it possible that McGahn is cooperating with Mueller (For over thirty hours!), and he has not told Mueller anything to implicate Trump in legal wrongdoing? Since we can be quite certain McGahn knows what was going on, the only obvious thing that would fit these facts is that Trump didn’t do anything wrong and I hope we can all agree this is absurd.
So something must be wrong. There are several possibilities:
First, the entire Maggie & Mike McGahnObsturctapalooza could be a crock. We really do not know anything concrete for certain. All we know is that some White House sources (probably including McGahn and his lawyer) told Maggie & Mike that he had “cooperated extensively for 30 hours.” Is this true? Maybe.
Second, as any lawyer can tell you, there is “cooperating” in the sense that you are not willing to take a bullet for the cause, and “cooperating” in the sense that you are fully on board and spilling the beans. While it is much more likely that McGahn is doing the minimum and using all his lawyerly expertise to minimize his exposure while giving up as little as possible. Before we anoint McGahn as a star witness for the prosecution, it would be good to understand which type of “cooperator” he is. We don’t know.
Third, it is not clear if there were any stipulated limits to the subjects that McGahn agreed to cooperate with Mueller on. Was it limited to his time as White House counsel during for which he has no claim of attorney/client privilege, or is it entirely open ended? Before we assume that McGahn “splilled the beans” on campaign related matters for which he does have a potentially valid claim of attorney/client privilege (albeit he can’t use it to cover up crimes, but that’s much further down the rabbit hole), we need know if these subjects were covered in the interviews. Maybe not.
The major problem with the type of access journalism practiced by Maggie & Mike is that it serves up contradictory misinformation that is reported as fact, and leaves the burden of interpretation of mutually exclusive narratives to the reader. What we are left with is chaos and confusion. People select whichever “facts” they prefer to fit the narrative they are disposed to argue. If you would like to see McGahn as the star witness for the prosecution, you can conclude that thirty hours of cooperation means that Trump is totally screwed. If, on the other hand, you want to to see the president exonerated, it is clear that thirty hours of testimony and no implication of wrongdoing means that Trump did nothing wrong.
This is the purpose. To sow contradictory misinformation and use the ensuing hullabaloo as a smokescreen and propaganda vehicle. It also serves to distract from other more damaging news like the John Brennan accusations of treason and Omarosa reality TV.
So what is the truth? All we can really say is that the White House is sourcing stories through Maggie & Mike that say that McGahn cooperated extensively for thirty hours, whatever that means. Also, the White House is sourcing stories that say McGahn did not implicate Trump. What do we know is true? Nothing, except that they had some purpose, or more likely multiple purposes, in pushing this out into the public.
As consumers of information in this age of spin and access journalism we are required to be skeptical and look behind the curtain. I believe Stern’s article helps by focusing on the motives of all those involved.