President Donald Trump may have lost his case to prevent the congressional testimony of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. But even if the appeal is unsuccessful, warned former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers on CNN, there are still ways McGahn and the White House can block the release of any useful information to Congress.
"Executive privilege is an area very unlike attorney-client privilege that is not well-litigated," said Rodgers. "It's not very clear what the parameters are. I think what we will see, if Don McGahn shows up to testify, is a lot of assertions of executive privilege, and that's really the problem there. The congressional testimony doesn't give a lot of ways to have that issue resolved immediately on the spot, the way you would in a criminal trial with a judge presiding. So that's going to be the problem, because it's an individual inquiry based on the actual question asked and the likely answer. It's going to be a big mess, frankly, because we're going to have all sorts of assertions, no real way to resolve them, and I'm afraid that even if he sits in the chair, the House is not going to get a lot of information out of him for that reason."
"But in theory, it would not cover obstruction, issues of obstruction of justice, actual assertions of a crime, right?" said anchor John Berman.
"Again, whether it is a crime or not is subject to a legal analysis," said Rodgers. "I think it will be a mess. I think they're unlikely to get a lot of good information from him, beyond what he testified to or spoke to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller's team."
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