White House orders McGahn to defy House subpoena

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The White House has ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn not to turn over documents to Congress because President Trump may exert executive privilege to block their release.

Pat Cipollone, the current top White House lawyer, wrote a letter on Tuesday asking the House Judiciary Committee to go through the White House to request documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“The White House provided these records to Mr. McGahn in connection with its cooperation with the special counsel's investigation and with the clear understanding that the records remain subject to the control of the White House for all purposes,” Cipollone wrote to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Judiciary panel.

“The White House records remain legally protected from disclosure under longstanding constitutional principles, because they implicate significant executive branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege,” Cipollone added.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney gave the directive “not to produce” the records through a separate letter Cipollone sent Tuesday to McGahn’s attorney.

While the letters stop short of invoking privilege, which keeps private conversations between the president and his advisers from public view, it suggests the White House might take that step to block McGahn’s testimony, which could trigger a major legal battle with congressional Democrats investigating Trump.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/442490-white-house-orders-mcgahn-to-defy-house-subpoena?userid=229233

[lunatica]

1. They're getting mighty desperate

[Vinca]

2. It's time to start using the court system to enforce the legal authority of Congress.

The House Dems have to start playing extreme hardball. There will be a whole lot more compliance when everyone has to hire a $500 an hour attorney.

[emmaverybo]

3. But Trump can't stop Mcgann from testifying. He doesn't need docs for that.

Read this. Reassuring and makes sense:

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/yes-don-mcgahn-publicly-testify-trump/17827/

[onenote]

8. The Palmer Report has very little credibility.

And his statement that there is nothing that Trump could do to stop McGahn from testifying because McGahn isn't an employee of the government anymore is misleading.

First, there is a limited amount of judicial precedent on the scope of executive privilege. However, what is known is that one of the bases for the existence of the privilege is, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in the Nixon tapes case, "the valid need for protection of communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the performance of their manifold duties.... [h]uman experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decision-making process."

That rationale doesn't disappear simply because one of the participants in the conversation no longer works for the government. It is for that reason that it is to be expected that if a president invoked executive privilege with respect to a former employee, it is far more likely than not that the former employee will elect not to testify unless and until the matter is resolved via a negotiated settlement between Congress and the White House or by a court decision.

Second, while it is true that the White House can't threaten to fire someone who no longer is an employee, it doesn't mean the White House couldn't go to court to seek a restraining order against the former employee disregarding the invocation of executive privilege. I don't think any situation has ever reached that point, but it is misleading for Palmer to ignore it.

In the end, I wouldn't be completely surprised if a compromise is worked out whereby McGahn is allowed to produce certain documents (i.e., those already produced to the Special Counsel) and deliver testimony to a carefully limited set of questions.

[emmaverybo]

9. Palmer speculates in broad strokes. You provide more substance. Appreciate that. Still enjoy

Palmer’s take. Like Wikipedia, no one should use Palmer as an authoritative source. He reads between the lines, makes some risky, but sometime accurate predictions, and captures the big picture, which can be missed in more legal-bound analysis. Yes, he glosses over the ifs and and buts. But given that his report makes no pretense to scholarship, I don’t see how his angle is much less fanciful or more misleading than most online blogs.
He missed the finer points.
You articulated them.
The gist is that McGahn will end up testifying, and perhaps the damage that does will rest more with what he can’t say, than what he does.

[malaise]

4. Can the WH deny document to the House of Representatives or prevent McGahn from

showing up for a hearing after allowing him to do both for the SP.

[onenote]

7. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Unlike the attorney-client privilege, executive privilege is more narrow. So if a document has already been produced to the Special Counsel, it wouldn't be covered by executive privilege. But any documents not produced to the Special Counsel -- even a duplicate copy of a document previously produced that has hand written notes in the margin, might be subject to a claim of executive privilege. Similarly, testimonial information provided to the Special Counsel wouldn't be protected, but information that expands on or covers areas that were not addressed in testimony to the Special Counsel might be subject to executive privilege.

[backtoblue]

5. A little bit of info on Pat...

Cipollone graduated from Covington Catholic High School in 1984.[1] He graduated Fordham University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1988. He attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was managing editor of the University of Chicago Law Review, earning a Juris Doctor in 1991.[2]

He was a law clerk for Judge Danny Boggs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1991–1992, and served as an assistant to Attorney General William P. Barr from 1992–1993.[3]



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Cipollone




Is Cipollone up to the task of continuing the breakneck transformation of the federal bench? Unnamed sources told Axios over the weekend that he is. One of those sources just may be Leonard Leo, the Catholic fundamentalist who heads the Federalist Society and a Trump whisperer on judicial nominees. The National Law Journal reported on Monday that he and Cipollone sit on the board of directors of the Catholic Information Center, whose mission is to make “the Catholic Church alive in the hearts and minds of men and women living and working in our nation’s capital.”

If Cipollone and Leo are as close as their shared commitment to Catholic values suggests, then the fix is in: You can expect Cipollone to pick up right where McGahn left off — and to choose judicial candidates from the same largely white, largely male conservative brain trust that gave us Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and about one-sixth of every federal appeals judge now serving in the country.
https://www.google.com/amp/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2018/10/pat-cipollone-perfect-white-house-counsel.html

[Chin music]

6. Covington again.

Huh.