An angry and defiant Donald Trump has said publically in no uncertain terms that there is no way that former White House counsel Don McGahn will testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
President Trump told Fox News in an exclusive wide-ranging interview Thursday evening that the White House has lost patience with congressional Democrats, and forcefully dismissed their efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn and other administration officials to testify.
“They’ve testified for many hours, all of them. I would say, it’s done,” Trump told Fox News’ Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge. “Nobody has ever done what I’ve done. I’ve given total transparency. It’s never happened before like this. They shouldn’t be looking anymore. It’s done.”
Trump added, that he felt that Attorney General Bill Barr made the right call in deciding not to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. House Democrats had insisted that committee counsel, rather than members of Congress, question Barr.
“It’s not up to me, it’s up to him,” Trump said, referring to Barr’s decision not to show up. “And they were going to treat him differently than they’ve treated other people. And of course, we’ve been treated differently to start off with. We’ve gone through so many investigations, everybody. And it’s so ridiculous. No obstruction, no nothing — there’s been no nothing. There’s been no collusion, there never was, they knew that from day one.”
Allegations of Spying
Trump’s anger comes on the heels of new allegations of what may have been improper “spying” by the FBI of his 2016 campaign, the results of which may have led to the launch of the Mueller probe.
The New York Times reported earlier Thursday that the FBI secretly deployed an informant to London in 2016 to gather information from then-Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, who told Fox News later that the informant posed as a researcher and tried to “seduce” him.
Former FBI Director James Comey, Trump told Herridge, “probably was one of the people leading the effort on spying” on his campaign. Trump said we “will find out pretty soon” the extent of Comey’s involvement.
“Comey leaked and he lied,” Trump told the Fox host. “He lied in front to Congress. He was sworn testimony, classified information. He did a terrible job. Everybody wanted him fired — you now everybody; [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer, every Democrat almost, every Republican, almost — probably 100 percent.”
Trump has called the subpoena issued to McGahn by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a “ridiculous” waste of time. The ex-White House lawyer sat for more than two dozen hours of interviews with Mueller and featured prominently in Mueller’s report, and Trump has disputed the account in the report that he ordered McGahn to fire Mueller at one point.
Trump additionally told Herridge he expected that key FBI documents that may shed light on the origins of the bureau’s probe into his campaign could be declassified and released within a matter of weeks, or months at the latest.
Asked about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ ongoing efforts to investigate him on multiple fronts, Trump dismissed the probes as partisan stunts.
I think it’s totally ludicrous to the people that voted for these wackos Pelosi and Schumer are still supporting these Congressmen their all old washed up has beens who are wasting a lot of time with money.
little d. trump is a traitor. Period. In the 1970’s my responsibility as a USAF Officer was to be on alert ready to launch nuclear tipped Minuteman ICBM’s upon receipt of a valid launch message from the POTUS. The POTUS is NOT someone who should speak kindly of Vladimir Putin and demean our Intelligence Officers. d. trump may as well be a vetted Putin underling.