Donald Trump’s White House lawyer has a main job – and he fails – Mother Jones

Donald McGahn, like all the advice of the White House that served before him, has a large portfolio but a fundamental charge: to keep his boss, the President of the United States, by problem. To say that McGahn has not successfully succeeded in this department is an understatement. President Donald Trump and his administration were besieged by the scandal from the start. And the lawyers who worked in previous administrations, democrats and republicans, wondered if McGahn had the judgment or the weight with his client to do the work.

Four months later, although he has not yet faced a crisis that is not of its own manufacture, the Trump administration faces a growing list of controversies, legal and other. The FBI investigates the retired lieutenant-general Michael Flynn, who for 22 days was advisor to Trump’s national security, for his lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests and for his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office. There are two conference probes examining Flynn’s actions and two others looking at if someone connecting to the Trump campaign interacted with the Vladimir Putin regime when he was interfering with the 2016 presidential race. And the Ministry of Justice recently appointed a special lawyer to supervise the FBI investigation on Moscow’s interference and Trump-Russia connections. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son -in -law and a close advisor; Former Trump campaign director, Paul Manafort,; And Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, will face the FBI or control of the congress.

“It feels like Mr. Trump has people who speak to him, but he does not take their advice, will not ask them for advice or do not follow their advice.”

All presidents, democrats and republicans, experience their share of scandals. But the rhythm and extent of the controversies engulfing Trump’s white house are at a different level and pace. (Remember that the massacre of Richard Nixon on Saturday evening – when he dismissed the special prosecutor investigating on Watergate – did not take place after almost five years in his presidency.) And each leak and drop of new information raises more questions about McGahn, the man whose work consists in extinguishing Trump Gary of Potential Land Mines before they explode in New News.

An elections lawyer who served five years controversial to the Federal Electoral Commission, McGahn met Trump for the first time at the end of 2014 and was one of the first hiring of the magnate when he launched his presidential race. He was loved by Trump by rejecting an effort to withdraw Trump from the New Hampshire primary election and coordinated the well -known release of the campaign of a list of potential candidates from the Supreme Court, a decision that helped attract evangelical and ambivalent conservative voters.

Shortly after winning the presidency, Trump rewarded McGahn’s loyalty by choosing him to become a White House lawyer.

About six weeks later, on January 4, according to the New York TimesMcGahn spoke with Michael Flynn, the retired general that Trump had selected as a national security advisor a week before hiring McGahn, about a sensitive affair. In August 2016, Flynn’s consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, signed a contract of $ 600,000 to put pressure on behalf of Turkish interest; The Flynn client was a Dutch company led by a Turkish businessman who is an ally of the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the time, however, Flynn did not register under the law on the registration of foreign agents, which requires that lobbyists and defenders working for foreign governments disclose their work.

Now, with the inauguration of Trump at almost two weeks, Flynn would have told McGahn that he was under federal investigation for not having disclosed his lobbying in the name of foreign interests.

What McGahn has done with this information is not clear – but it nevertheless reveals the former lawyers of the White House that Flynn then received a post from the White House, undoubtedly the most sensitive work of the White House. (McGahn, through a White House spokesperson, refused to comment on this story.) The alumni of the board of the Council in previous white houses say that it was unimaginable to hire a national security advisor who faced legal issues concerning foreign lobbying, not to mention the one who was under federal investigation. “In the office of the lawyer of the White House in which I worked, the idea that someone was the subject of a investigation was a big red flag and it would be doubtful that we were going ahead with this person,” explains Bill Marshall, a former assistant adviser to the White House of Clinton. “It doesn’t even say it strong enough.”

Flynn remained on work and, during the transition, would have told the outgoing administration of Obama that it should delay a joint American military strike on an installation of the Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa – a decision which was in accordance with the desires of the Turkish government.

During a short ceremony at the White House on January 22, Flynn was sworn in as a national security advisor and McGahn as chief advisor. Four days later, Sally Yates, the acting American prosecutor, and a senior official of the national security division of the Ministry of Justice met McGahn in the White House. Yates informed McGahn of disturbing development: the United States had credible information to suggest that Flynn had not told the truth when he denied having discussed sanctions during conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Yates added that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.

Flynn had lied. In addition, its mention of sanctions was potentially illegal under an obscure law known as law law. (Since the creation of the law in 1799, no one has been condemned under the Logan law.) Yates warned McGahn that the gap between public declarations of Flynn and what he said to the Russian ambassador has left him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

“If Sally Yates had come to see me with this information, I would be sunk in the corridor as if my hair was on fire,” said Rob Weiner, another former lawyer for the White House of Clinton. Because the messenger in this case was a Holdver of the Obama administration, added Weiner, Trump’s White House “might not have had much confidence in Yates at that time. Even so, it should have been something to cause alarm bells.” Jack Goldsmith, a former main lawyer of the Ministry of Justice during the George W. Bush administration, echoes the observation of Weiner. Writing on the Lawfare website, Goldsmith weighed: “Especially by coming in the context of knowledge (and apparently doing nothing) about Flynn’s failure to report his work as a foreign agent, the information that Yates should have triggered strong alarm ringtone.”

Flynn, with two federal surveys suspended above his head, remained at work for another 18 days. He joined Trump at the Oval Office for calls with foreign dignitaries, including the leaders of Australia and Russia. He probably attended the daily intelligence briefings and had unhindered access to classified information. It was only after Washington Post On February 13, Yates’ warning from McGahn’s statement of Flynn’s sensitivity to the blackmail that Trump dismissed Flynn.

The question looming on the whole debacle was: How had Flynn been allowed to stay at work? During the media conference the day after Flynn’s dismissal, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, addressed the role of McGahn in the controversy of Flynn. McGahn had carried out his own exam after meeting Yates, explained Spicer, and “determined that there is no legal problem, but rather a problem of trust”.

It was a mystifying answer, especially given the facts that emerged later: Flynn would have been the target of active investigations. “It is very difficult to understand how McGahn could have achieved these conclusions,” wrote Goldsmith, the former lawyer for the Bush administration. McGahn, noted Goldsmith, could not know all the details of the investigations targeting Flynn. (Indeed, Yates later testified that McGahn seemed not to have known that the FBI had interviewed Flynn about his calls with the Russian ambassador.) “Just as important, the last word on the legality of Flynn’s actions was not McGahn to do,” continued Goldsmith. “This call first lies in the FBI and especially the Attorney General.”

The constant flow of revelations on Trump’s White House and its various legal dramas have made a more severe light on McGahn and the lawyer’s office. After Job reported that the White House officials had put pressure on the director of national intelligence and the head of the national security agency to minimize the FBI Russia survey, Goldsmith tweeted“Ask again: WH Counsel 1) Is it incompetent or 2) ineffective because the customer is crazy and lacking access / influence?”

Lawyers who have represented Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump is almost a customer as difficult as they can imagine. “We have the feeling that Mr. Trump has people who speak to him, but he does not take their advice, will not ask them for their advice or do not follow their advice,” explains Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech who studied the office of the White House. C. Boyden Gray, the White House lawyer for President George Hw Bush, said that few, if not, had more financial and ethical tangles than Trump. “I did not have close to the complexities that Don McGahn had,” he said earlier this year. Bob Bauer, a former lawyer for the White House of Obama, recently wondered if a lawyer could brake Trump: “Is the White House Council up to this president? We can discover that no one is.” There is an indication that Trump trusts McGahn. When Trump wanted to publish statements of support for Flynn and Kushner after the name of a special lawyer to supervise the Trump-Russia investigation, he was apparently McGahn who convinced Trump not to do it.

But part of the work, according to the former lawyers of the lawyer’s office, consists in giving unwelcome advice to the president and insist that advice is followed. “It is always very difficult to say no to the president and not to do what the President of the United States wants,” said Bill Marshall, the former lawyer for the White House of Clinton. “But the long-term interests of the President of the United States may often not do something he might want to do, and if you do it, it can come back and hit yourself with a direction you have never planned.”