WTF Just Happened Today

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

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1/ The White House invoked executive privilege and ordered former counsel Donald McGahn not to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to Robert Mueller's investigation. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, White House counsel Pat Cipollone argued that "McGahn does not have the legal right to disclose these documents to third parties" and asked that the committee instead direct the request to the White House, "because they implicate significant Executive Branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege." Trump has also promised to assert executive privilege to block McGahn's testimony to the committee later this month. McGahn spent more than 30 hours speaking to Mueller's investigators, outlining two episodes where Trump asked him to have Mueller fired, and later asking McGahn to deny news reports about that conversation. McGahn rebuffed both requests. (CNBC / ABC News / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / New York Times)

• ???? Day 819: After Trump fired James Comey, he attempted to have his White House counsel fire Mueller a month later. Trump twice told Donald McGahn to call Rosenstein and order him to fire Mueller, saying: "Mueller has to go" for alleged "conflicts that precluded him from serving as special counsel." McGahn refused, saying he did not want to repeat the "Saturday Night Massacre." McGahn then called Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, and told him Trump had asked him to "do crazy shit." Trump later pressured McGahn to deny that he tried to fire Mueller.

• ???? Day 820: Trump claimed that statements about him "by certain people" in Mueller's "crazy" report are "total bullshit," made by people trying to make themselves look good and harm him. Close White House advisers said Trump's rage was aimed at former White House counsel Don McGahn, who blocked several attempts by Trump to interfere in Mueller's investigation. Trump continued tweeting: "This was an Illegally Started Hoax that never should have happened, a…" He never finish the statement. (Politico / Bloomberg / Washington Post / NBC News / Wall Street Journal)

2/ FBI Director Christopher Wray said he would not call the 2016 investigation into Trump's campaign advisers "spying." When asked during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing if he had "any evidence that any illegal surveillance" into the...

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