Don McGahn testimony

Trump has persistently denied any effort to fire Mueller amid the long inquiry, which probed allegations that members of Trump’s team had colluded with Russian figures during his 2016 presidential campaign. Yet in Friday’s interview, [Trump White House counsel Don] McGahn directly disputed Trump’s claims, repeatedly laying out Trump’s consideration of firing Mueller.

“Well, you know, he certainly entertained the idea. Certainly seemed to ask a number of people about it. Certainly had a number of conversations with me about something along those lines,” McGahn told lawmakers.

“So, you know, it was disappointing that he’d come out and say, oh, it was never on the table when, certainly, at least the conflict of interest issue and whether that would preclude Mueller from being special counsel, certainly was discussed,” he added.

  The Hill

"Disappointing."

“He wanted me to call [former Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein and inform Rod that [Mueller] had conflicts. And, in the President's view, Mueller shouldn't be able to serve as special counsel because of these conflicts,” he said. McGahn called the potential dismissal of Mueller a “point of no return.”

[...]

“What I was not going to do is cause any sort of chain reaction that would cause this to spiral out of control in a way that wasn’t in the best interests ... of my client, which was the President,” he added.

The transcript also shows McGahn’s own fears of being implicated in the investigation, as Trump was pressuring him to release a statement saying Trump had not sought to pressure Rosenstein to remove Mueller.

[...]

House Democrats had subpoenaed McGahn in April 2019, seeking his insights into allegations that members of Trump’s team had colluded with Russian figures during his 2016 presidential campaign — a topic that became the subject of a 22-month investigation by Mueller.

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The Trump White House directed McGahn to defy the subpoena as part of its broad stonewalling of Democratic investigations. The House sued to force McGahn’s testimony, leading to a protracted court battle that ended last month when the two sides struck an agreement for the former White House counsel to testify before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors.

UPDATE:

[...]

The Justice Department secretly subpoenaed Apple in February 2018 for account information of then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, as well as his wife, and secured a gag order barring the company from telling them about it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

It is unclear what the Justice Department was investigating or whether prosecutors actually obtained any of McGahn's account information.

[...]

Apple informed the McGahns of the subpoena last month after the gag order expired. />It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to subpoena the records of a sitting White House counsel. The news of the subpoena, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes days after it emerged that the Trump-era Justice Department had also subpoenaed Apple for communications metadata of at least two Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as current and former staff and family members as part of a leak investigation.

Those seizures are now under review by the Justice Department's inspector general. The two lawmakers who had their data seized were Reps. Adam Schiff, the committee's top Democrat, and Eric Swalwell.

[...]

While the Mueller investigation concluded in 2019, McGahn was called earlier this month to testify before the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee following a protracted two-year legal battle. Testimony from that appearance was made public last week, and revealed the degree to which McGahn felt he was being pressured toward wrongdoing by Trump.

McGahn told the committee he was made particularly uneasy by Trump's repeated requests that he facilitate the dismissal of Mueller, who had been tasked with investigating possible ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

  NPR