Former White House Counsel Don McGahn and Donald Trump Jr. never testified before Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury in the Russia probe, according to newly released court documents from the Justice Department.
I’d still like Mueller to explain why he never charged Jr., then. That bullshit of him “not knowing” that what he was doing was wrong was belied by his own e-mail traffic that he released, where the dangle specifically said that it was part of the russian government’s support for trump.
McGahn…
“He was attracted to the Dark Side of the Force”
No John Dean , he…
I don’t know if Mueller’s hands were tied in some way or if the investigation was a sham. Mueller seems by the book, but he also did not get aggressive in forcing people to testify. His adherence to the rules so tightly allowed him to be manipulated and his entire investigation compromised. We cannot have justice if powerful people can just declare they are not cooperating and we just give them a pass. This entire investigation has shown a fragility to our democracy that is deeply disturbing.
Yes there are holes in the whole thing. Hopefully more light will be shed as investigations continue.
“Don McGahn did not testify before the grand jury.”
The single-most important eyewitness to Trump obstructing justice…
Who quit rather than follow an illegal order to fire Mueller…
Never even called to testify.
Who (cough) Barr (cough) prevented it?
(So…when does he get a House subpoena?)
He should have testified much earlier in Mueller’s investigation than Barr was appointed. I think that a number of people besides Barr must be working hard to hide some skeletons.
Mueller was special counsel as opposed to for instance Starr who was a special prosecutor which would have given Mueller far more latititude in his pursuit of witnesses.
The former was created with built in limitations, the latter was not. PP threatened to fire Muller a number of times and tried to enlist McGahn to do the deed. People may be thinking well, why didn’t he just risk being fired and go wide, then leak the entire report and we’d all be thinking well done. It doesn’t work like that. He had a thankless job, and we were led mistakenly to believe he’d reveal a smoking gun. It was like his report was going to be an oasis in a desert of lies.
I saw speculation on twitter that this may indicate that McGahn cooperated with the Mueller team.
Demonstrates, once again, that the reason Mueller could not find evidence of a crime is that OBSTRUCTION WORKED!
ETA:
Exactly correct.
But part of the obstruction onion included misleading the public of re the (lack of) expanse of Mueller’s investigation. I can only fault Mueller with not expressing clearly the boundaries of his report. He might be a master of lawyer-speak, but perhaps not a master of clear communication.
I expect, at some point in time, that we will learn that he wanted to charge Trump, but Barr forbid it.
Rod Rosenstein also had a hand in it. He was Mueller’s immediate superior, and maybe he feared he’d be fired if he didn’t do something to weaken the final results. So he stood with Barr instead.
We wanted that pony so badly, and apparently trumPP’s first reaction was that he thought there was going to be a good news pony. When he learned there’d be an investigation:
“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
Yes. Me, too.
Don Jr is counting on dad whipping up the base so he’ll have an arrest and release like El Chapo’s son.
Maybe when he speaks aloud at Barr’s funeral.
I speculate that Rosenstein was deathly afraid of losing his pension payout like McCabe of the FBI did when he was fired a day or two before it fully vested. How else might we explain his obvious craven behavior?
McGahn is about to be Queen for a Day.
Exactly. They pay attention when their futures are on the line. The country’s, not so much.
Everybody knows you can’t indict the children of a sitting Republican President. It’s in the constitution.