Two articles out this past weekend from The New York Times detail the cooperation provided by White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II to the special counsel investigation, as well as the revelation that Trump administration officials had been previously unaware of the extent of McGahn’s assistance. There are now reports that this news has the Trump administration in a tizzy, evidenced as well by the president’s Twittered weigh-in on the articles and escalated attacks on Robert Mueller’s team (in particular, referring to the government prosecutors as “thugs”).
It’s remarkable that a White House counsel has given such extensive testimony in an investigation against a president. According to the Times’ reporting, McGahn has provided information that the investigators would not have known otherwise, such as Trump's attempts to fire Mueller. We don’t know the extent of his other testimony, but it seems quite possible that there’s much more. This is incredibly bad for a president who, pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt, colluded with a foreign power to gain the presidency, has worked to protect that foreign power’s efforts from full discovery, and who has also worked non-stop to protect himself from the repercussions of his treasonous actions.
The account of McGahn’s rationale for fully cooperating with the investigation is also noteworthy. Not only was he acting in accordance with the strategy of openness advocated by Trump’s original outside counsel, but McGahn also apparently feared that he might be made the fall guy for some of Trump's illicit activity. Thus, he acted out of a basic instinct for self-preservation that can be sourced, at least in part, back to the environment of distrust and disloyalty created by the president himself. McGahn also seems to have been aware of the legal risks that non-cooperation posed to him and other White House counsel. This raises the intriguing point that the president may have been undercut by the White House attorney possessing at least some minimal sense of lawyerly ethics. This, in combination with McGahn’s professed belief that he serves the presidency, not the president, suggests a professional roadblock to the president’s scorched earth attempts to derail and discredit the Mueller investigation.
These Times pieces are remarkable for the picture of incompetence they draw around this president and those who advise him. The idea that not until the first Times article was published did they know about the extent of McGahn’s testimony is mind-boggling. Did no one really not stop to consider what McGahn might be saying to investigators until now? The reports of surprise on the part of the president and his staff suggests a massive blind spot, and raises the question of what other gaping holes in their defense they’ve left open for the special counsel investigation to ride through.
This massive oversight on the part of Trump and his staff brings into sharper relief than ever a fundamental dynamic of the president’s frantic and transparent attempts to escape the consequences of his various bad actions. Even as the president attempts to subvert not only our justice system, but arguably our entire political system to hide his guilt and stave off punishment, the system itself is chugging methodically along in a way that increasingly appears set to unleash catastrophic consequences on this president. Donald Trump has created the highest stakes both for himself and our democracy: he has bet his defense on burning down our country’s institutions, but the price of failure increasingly means devastating legal repercussions for his team and likely himself, not to mention toxic political fallout for the Trump-enabling GOP as a whole. McGahn's testimony and the amazing failure of this administration to fully anticipate it reminds us that this president really has bet the farm on blowing up our country in order to save himself. If we can manage to win the political fight against him, and hold his authoritarian efforts at bay, then we might still hope to see justice prevail.