by WorldTribune Staff, August 19, 2018
President Donald Trump, saying he has “nothing to hide,” tweeted that he encouraged White House counsel Don McGahn to fully cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
A New York Times report had said that McGahn decided to cooperate fully because he worried Trump was trying to set him up to take the fall for any possible obstruction charges.
Trump tweeted on Aug. 19: “The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Counsel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Counsel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……”
McGahn’s attorney, William A. Burck, confirmed that his client had cooperated fully.
“President Trump, through counsel, declined to assert any privilege over Mr. McGahn’s testimony, so Mr. McGahn answered the special counsel team’s questions fulsomely and honestly, as any person interviewed by federal investigators must,” Burck said in a statement.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, said the president has “encouraged all the people who testified to tell the truth, to take as long as they needed to to do that, and as long as they did, they’ll have no problem with the president or us. And we have no reason to believe that Don McGahn didn’t do that.”
Giuliani cited comments from John Dowd, former legal adviser to Trump, who told NBC News and Reuters that McGahn was a “strong witness for the president.”
“As John Dowd, who was the president’s lawyer at the time, said today loudly and clearly, Don McGahn was the strongest witness for the president, meaning he completely gave testimony that said that the president didn’t do anything wrong,” said Giuliani.
Giuliani noted that Trump has turned over 1.4 million documents, encouraged 30 witnesses, including McGahn, to testify and declined to assert executive privilege as part of his commitment to transparency.
The New York Times, citing multiple unnamed sources, reported that McGahn spent 30 hours over three days answering questions as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“I think the best analysis would be that the Mueller team is panicking, they know they don’t have a case, there was no collusion, there was no obstruction, they can’t prove it, and they are trying to get the president to testify,” Giuliani told Fox’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine”.
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