The Wall Street Journal’s right-leaning editorial board said President Trump should get “credit” for allowing White House lawyer Don McGahn to submit to interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller, but said the news media are refusing to give him any.
In an editorial published Sunday night, the paper said that Trump is being portrayed as though he has something to hide, even though it was an act of transparency to waive executive privilege in order for McGahn to speak with Mueller.
“This isn’t what you’d expect if Mr. Trump is leading a coverup,” the Journal said. “Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton fought extensive legal battles with prosecutors over executive privilege. Mr. Clinton invoked privilege to block aides Bruce Lindsey and Sidney Blumenthal from testifying to Ken Starr’s grand jury. Yet when Mr. Trump doesn’t invoke privilege for his White House counsel, he gets no credit.”
Trump over the weekend repeatedly criticized reporting by the New York Times on McGahn’s cooperation with Mueller, which said McGahn is “giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president.”
McGahn’s own lawyer, William Burck, is quoted in the Times report saying that Trump personally declined to exercise any privilege over McGahn.
“Could it be that Mr. Trump let Mr. McGahn cooperate with Mr. Mueller because he felt he had nothing to cover up?” the Journal said. “This is precisely what Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday: ‘I allowed him and all others to testify — I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide.’ Because Mr. Trump makes so many false statements, this claim is also assumed to be false — though legal logic and the public evidence suggest that in this case it may be true.”
