Subpoenaing former White House Counselor Donald McGahan, 71-year-old House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.) continues to push the false narrative that 72-year-old President Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice. Special Counsel 74-year-old Robert Mueller concluded in his final report March 22 that Trump or his campaign did not conspire with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, as alleged by Democrats and the media for the last two years. It wasn’t long ago, March 20, that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told CBS’s “60 Minutes” Scott Pelley that “Trump was a Russian asset.” Mueller’s final report emphatically refutes McCabe’s testimony, saying that Trump or anyone in his campaign did not collude with the Russians. Yet once Mueller rendered his verdict summarized by 68-year-old Atty. Gen. William Barr March 24, Democrats pivoted to obstruction of justice.
Mueller concluded in his report that he didn’t have evidence needed to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, but also stated, breaching Department of Justice protocol, that he could not “exonerate” the president. Mueller can’t have it both ways: Refusing to charge Trump, while, at the same time, saying he couldn’t “exonerate” him. Federal prosecutors either “charge” or “decline” to charge based on evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Mueller took the unusual step to not charge Trump, while, simultaneously, say he couldn’t “exonerate” him. When you consider that Mueller emphatically stated Trump and his campaign associates did not conspire or coordinate with the Kremlin, there’s no underlying crime on which to cover anything up. Nadler wants to interrogate McGahan under oath to ask about Trump’s request to ask Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller.
Trump’s alleged act of asking McGahan to ask Rosenstein to consider firing Mueller because of conflicts-of-interest doesn’t meet the legal definition of obstruction of justice. When Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey May 9, 2017, Democrats and the press cried obstruction of justice. Mueller said May 10, 2017 that Trump had every right as commander-in-chief to fire anyone of his choice. Yet Mueller’s 23 experienced federal prosecutors found that Trump’s actions did not rise to the level of obstruction of justice. When former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid compute experts to “acid bleach” her hard drive destroying 33,000 emails, then hammered 13 cell-ones to destroy electronic data, that meets the definition of obstruction of justice. Yet Comey, on the recommendation of McCabe, refused to charge Hillary July 5, 2016 with obstruction of justice.
Interviewing McGahan, Nadler hopes to prove that Trump attempted to obstruct justice, something Muller couldn’t prove. When you consider that Mueller spent nearly two years investigating Russian meddling and alleged Trump collusion, you’d think Nadler and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calfi.) would accept his findings, rather than start their own investigation. MeGahan has nothing to add to what Mueller already said that Trump wanted Mueller out. But Trump’s got every right under Article 2 to pick-and-choose Justice Department and FBI officials. At the same time, Mueller found that Trump did nothing covert to sabotage the Special Counsel investigation. All Trump’s actions were either tweeted or spoken openly about his disgust for the false accusations against him by Democrats and the press, including Democrat members of Mueller’s team.
Even if McGahan confirms that Trump once asked him to talk with Rosenstein about ending the Mueller probe, it’s not about obstruction of justice but well within the president’s rights as commander-in-chief. “Mr. McGahan is a critical witness to many of the alleged instance of obstruction of justice and other misconduct described in the Mueller Report,” said Nadler, not realizing that Mueller did not find evidence to charge Trump with either conspiracy or obstruction. Nadler, Schiff and House Government Affairs and Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) can’t rewrite the definition of obstruction, simply because the Special Counsel didn’t find the results they wanted. As Mueller found out, all McGahan can say is that Trump tried to see whether there was a way out of what he saw as an illegitimate investigation for collusion that never took place in the 2016 campaign.
Nadler knows there’s nothing beyond the facts-in-evidence that McGahan can shed on the issue of obstruction. If Mueller could not find collusion or obstruction, no member of the partisan Democrat House can find anything new, other than redefining the charges or cherry picking the evidence. “It now falls on Congress to determine for itself the full scope of the misconduct and to decide what steps to take in the exercise of our duties of oversight, legislation and constitutional accountability,” said Nadler. Nadler forgets that Congress already looked into the various charges against Trump and asked Rosenstein to appoint a Special Counsel May 17, 2017. Oversight does not mean usurping the authority of the Special Counsel that already found Trump could not be charged with conspiracy or obstruction of justice. Nadler, Schiff and Cummings know they can’t play Special Counsel.
