House panel to go to court to enforce McGahn subpoena, Nadler says

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that the House panel will go to court this week to obtain requested grand jury material connected to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and to enforce a subpoena seeking the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.

“The very next step, either tomorrow or Friday, is we’re going into court to ask for the grand jury material and to enforce the subpoena against Mr. McGahn,” Nadler said. 

{mosads}“That’s particularly important because the excuses … that the White House gives for McGahn not testifying … are the same excuses for all the other fact witnesses, and if we break that, we’ll break the logjam,” he continued. 

McGahn was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year to answer questions about Mueller’s Russia probe before the House panel. However, President Trump instructed McGahn to reject the subpoena in May, pointing to a Justice Department legal opinion that argued the former official was immune from giving congressional testimony. 

During Mueller’s sweeping two-year investigation, McGahn alleged to investigators that the president, on multiple occasions, instructed him to have the former special counsel fired, citing conflicts of interest.

Trump has disputed McGahn’s account several times, saying last month that he “was never going to fire Mueller” and never even “suggested firing” him.

“I don’t care what [McGahn] says, it doesn’t matter,” Trump said at the time. 

McGahn is just one of a number of former Trump administration officials from whom the committee is seeking testimony as part of the probe. The committee has already issued subpoenas for testimony from former communications director Hope Hicks, Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.