Trump's ex-White House lawyer admits he's heavily cited in the Mueller report
Former White House counsel Don McGahn teased a possible tell-all deposition during a GOP luncheon, Axios reported Sunday.
McGahn said he spent two years being shouted down in the same way former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson was. According to the New York Times, Trump would fly into a rage when he was told that something was illegal or that he couldn't do something because the law barred him from it.
"I spent the last couple of years getting yelled at," McGahn said according to two sources at the Republican lunch. "And you may soon read about some of the more spirited debates I had with the president."
McGahn didn't specifically mention special counsel Robert Meuller or his report, but Axios reported that those in the room understood him to be referencing it.
The former White House counsel was party to many discussions about the legality of the president's decisions to fire former FBI Director James Comey, which prompted the Mueller investigation.
He also confessed that Trump can essentially get away with anything he wants. McGahn would tell Trump he couldn't do something and Trump would do something that's "180 degrees opposite." Yet, somehow it worked. "If it was 179 degrees, it wouldn't work," McGahn claimed.
Sometimes McGahn even had to rush to get to Trump before he tweeted out an irrational policy that was illegal. It's unclear who has that role now that McGahn is gone.
While McGahn mostly praised Trump at the lunch, Axios reported he "hinted at the brutality" of the president. According to McGahn, Trump runs the White House with a "hub and spokes model," giving several people the same task. It ultimately means there's no true chief of staff running the operation.
Bob Woodard's book Fear, nailed the president as a paranoid leader who believes "everyone is out to get me." That has manifested into a president that doesn't trust a "gatekeeper," according to McGahn, and can't stand intermediaries. Trump famously proclaimed during the 2016 election, "I alone can fix it."
McGahn confessed he was tasked with working to deregulate and rein in the "administrative state," Axios reported. He ultimately simply wrote executive orders to deregulate and pick conservative judicial nominees who wanted to limit federal power.
"McGahn said Trump's judges would spend 30–40 years unwinding the power of executive agencies," Axios wrote.
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