These people should try just reporting the facts some time. It’s actually easier and a few people might actually start trusting you again.

Trump allowed White House counsel McGahn to cooperate fully with Mueller; NY Times can’t figure out why

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives August 20, 2018

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Sometimes a duck is just a duck, but that’s a hard concept to get your brain around when you’re the New York Times and you’re determined to see evil and deceit in everything that happens in the White House. President Trump has said throughout the Mueller investigation that he did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. The liberal MSM simply assumes that’s a lie. Now, when people have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, one might expect them to freely answer questions and encourage those around them to do the same.

So when Mueller and his team of Democrat investigators wanted to interview White House counsel Don McGahn about everything from the Comey firing to Trump’s reporting desire to fire Mueller himself, Trump’s response was: Fine, go ahead. Not only that, but Trump didn’t even assert executive privilege over the interviews, leaving McGahn free to answer fully and completely about anything Mueller asked. Do these sound like the actions of a guilty man? Not to you. Not to me. But the New York Times smells a rat:

For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual. Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege. “A prosecutor would kill for that,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, which did not have the same level of cooperation from President Bill Clinton’s lawyers. “Oh my God, it would have been phenomenally helpful to us. It would have been like having the keys to the kingdom.” Mr. McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Mr. Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mr. Mueller. The president’s lawyers have explained that they believed their client had nothing to hide and that they could bring the investigation to an end quickly.

Mr. McGahn and his lawyer, William A. Burck, could not understand why Mr. Trump was so willing to allow Mr. McGahn to speak freely to the special counsel and feared Mr. Trump was setting up Mr. McGahn to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, according to people close to him. So he and Mr. Burck devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that Mr. McGahn did nothing wrong. It is not clear that Mr. Trump appreciates the extent to which Mr. McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel. The president wrongly believed that Mr. McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking. In fact, Mr. McGahn laid out how Mr. Trump tried to ensure control of the investigation, giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president. Mr. McGahn cautioned to investigators that he never saw Mr. Trump go beyond his legal authorities, though the limits of executive power are murky.

The passage in bold encapsulates the Times’s attempt to explain away Trump’s openness and willingness to cooperate. It’s not that Trump really has nothing to hide. No, Trump is an idiot! He didn’t understand what his lawyer would be doing when he met with Mueller’s team.

That’s quite a theory when applied to a man who’s probably hired more lawyers and been involved with more legal proceedings than the average Times reporter could even dream of. The idea that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the role of a lawyer or what he does is quite a concept. Does the Times think Trump doesn’t understand executive privilege either? I could have sworn the man was obsessed with secrecy. If that was the case, his ability to use executive privilege would be the first thing he would master. Yet he went ahead and allowed his lawyer to answer Mueller’s questions without invoking it, in spite of being guilty of everything Mueller seems to be looking for? As I said at the beginning, sometimes a duck is just a duck. If Trump is acting like a man with nothing to hide, the most likely explanation for that is that he really does have nothing to hide, and isn’t afraid of anything McGahn will say. But if you’re the New York Times, you can’t even consider that possibility so you have to come up with something that bend these events to fit your narrative. These people should try just reporting the facts some time. It’s actually easier and a few people might actually start trusting you again.

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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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