After an Axios scoop that White House Counsel Don McGahn is planning to leave the White House, President Trump confirmed the news with a tweet.
The big picture: This potentially puts a successor in charge of fielding a blizzard of requests or subpoenas for documents and testimony if Democrats win control of the House in the midterms. And if the White House winds up fighting special counsel Robert Mueller, an epic constitutional fight could lie ahead.
We're told that Trump has not formalized a successor.
But McGahn has told a confidant he would like his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe.
McGahn voluntarily cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team in a continuing investigation that already has resulted in guilty pleas, indictments and cooperation deals and one conviction for several Trump insiders.
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In one of the stormiest moments as White House lawyer, McGahn threatened to quit in June 2017 because he was “fed up” after Trump insisted he take steps to remove Mueller, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this year.
The source said Trump asked McGahn to raise what he said were Mueller’s conflicts with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because the president thought they were serious enough to remove Mueller.
McGahn did not discuss the issue with Rosenstein and threatened to quit when Trump continued to insist that he do so, the person said.
McGahn also was involved in the controversy surrounding Trump’s firing of former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
In January 2017, then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed McGahn that Flynn had misled the FBI about discussions he had had with former Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI.
Trump’s announcement of McGahn’s departure came as a surprise, including to McGahn.
He was not aware that Trump planned to send the tweet before it posted, according to a person close to McGahn who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“He was surprised,” this person said. While it had been an open secret inside the White House that McGahn planned to leave after Kavanaugh’s confirmation process concludes, he had not discussed his plans directly with Trump, according to this person.
McGahn, who has told many friends that he has wearily endured countless political and legal battles, saw Trump’s tweet as abrupt but typical of how the president acts — and it did not make him angry, according to two people familiar with his reaction. His reaction was, “Of course it happened this way,” one person said.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) responded to the news - and the president's tweet - with a tweet of his own:
Within an administration that has had a strained relationship with the GOP, McGahn has been known on Capitol Hill and elsewhere as a totem of conservatism who was eager to remake the federal judiciary — veering each week from managing political and legal eruptions around Trump to private confabs with conservative allies and attorneys to talk through policy and nominees.
McGahn advised Trump to pick Gorsuch, then a Colorado federal appeals court judge, to fill the Supreme Court opening the new president inherited, and oversaw his confirmation ...
McGahn also took a lead role in the administration’s effort to transform the lower federal courts. Trump has seen 60 of his nominees already confirmed, outdistancing the totals for other presidents at similar points in their tenure. Twenty-six of Trump’s confirmed nominees have been to the influential regional courts of appeals, far more than President Barack Obama was able to get confirmed early in his term. Some of those confirmed are on the list of those Trump said he will consider for the next Supreme Court opening.
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McGahn’s personal views — known for leaning hard to the right — aligned him during the administration’s first few months with then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and then-chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, working with them on projects to overhaul federal regulations and nominate conservatives.
White House counsel McGahn to leave post: Trump (Reuters)
Scoop: Don McGahn's coming White House exit (Axios)
Trump says White House Counsel Donald McGahn will leave his job in the fall (WaPo)