Government

Don McGahn Wants Out, But Trump Won't Let Him Leave Yet

Politico reports that White House Counsel Don McGahn just wants to slink back to Jones Day.

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Don McGahn (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Who is Trump going to turn to next? Is Saul Goodman available?

Trump has been manically removing any and all so-called “adults” who were allegedly able to mitigate his worst instincts. In the battle between Trump’s id and… reality, Trump’s id is winning. He’s purging everybody who has the guts to tell him “no.”

White House Counsel Don McGahn could the next out of the door. In fact, Politico reports that he wants out already. But, curiously, McGahn is one lawyer Trump doesn’t want to part with, at least not yet:

McGahn, according to two of the sources, has signaled interest in returning to the Jones Day law firm where he previously worked and reprising a role he had during the 2016 campaign by handling legal matters for Trump’s reelection.

But the exact timing for McGahn to make any move remains in flux. He’s told associates he’d like to leave the White House by the summer, but it could also be put on hold through the 2018 midterms…

“I think it’s all up in the air,” said a source close to McGahn. “I think he’d like to quit very much. The president doesn’t want him to quit. The president wants him to stay. I don’t think he knows who will replace him.”

Like everybody who works for the Trump administration, McGahn’s reputation has suffered mightily by the association. Check out this quote we published back in January from the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics:

[Don McGahn] is a cancer who has done much to undermine anticorruption mechanisms in this country… He drove the federal election commission into a ditch to undermine our election laws. He did a direct assault on the ethics program and now we’re learning he attacked the Department of Justice.

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It’s a reputation like this which probably led to the leak that McGahn threatened to quit if Trump fired special counsel Robert Mueller. All of these Trumpsters seem to be looking toward life after Trump, and realizing that the longer they stay, the harder it will be for them to ever reintegrate into polite society. Jones Day will probably take McGahn back, because their reputation is also so far down in the Trump-induced toilet that it can’t reasonably get much worse (stay tuned for our upcoming Law Firm Rankings if you’d like some evidence). But it’s hard to imagine a respectable shop or client wanting to touch McGahn with a 10-foot pole. There’s a reason a guy like Ted Olson stayed far, far away from this roiling clown show.

McGahn has been unable or unwilling to hold the Trump White House to any semblance of an ethical standard. Everybody still has their eyes on Russia, and that’s fine. But when Mueller finishes his investigation, or when Trump abuses his power to end the investigation, and Paul Ryan throws up his hands and refuses to act, it’ll be on to the next impeachable offense. That’s not going to be Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal… it’s going to be the Emoluments Clause violations that are just now heating up. Trump’s actions while campaigning for president are bad; Trump’s ethical violations since taking office are going to be far worse for anybody who still has the will to care about such things.

We are looking at the most corrupt White House in American history. A LOT of that is going to fall under McGahn’s account. Of course he wants to get out soon. McGahn is trying to use the same play college football coaches use: get another job before NCAA sanctions wreck your current school.

I’ve heard some people refer to McGahn as one of the “adults” who is willing to stand up to Trump, based on nothing more than this self-serving leak that he refused to do a thing that he had no Constitutional authority to do anyway. People shouldn’t get it twisted. Don McGahn has been White House Counsel for the most corrupt White House. I don’t expect he’ll ever be held fully accountable, because we’re not good at holding enablers accountable.

The fact that Trump, who is firing everybody who stands up to him, DOESN’T want McGahn to go, should tell you everything you need to know about him. He’s just a guy trying to scurry off a ship he perceived to be sinking.

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White House lawyer McGahn eager to exit [Politico]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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