The White House is taking yet another big step to declare any and all oversight conducted by the House of Representatives fundamentally illegitimate, placing President Trump above accountability entirely.

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Republicans who donʼt protect
Trumpʼs corruption will pay a very
steep price
Greg Sargent
President Trump walks across the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. (Alex Brandon)
The White House is taking yet another big step to declare any and all
oversight conducted by the House of Representatives fundamentally
illegitimate, placing President Trump above accountability entirely. The
New York Times reports:
President Trump is preparing to instruct his former White House
counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to defy a congressional subpoena and
skip a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, denying Democrats testimony
from one of the most important eyewitnesses to Mr. Trumpʼs attempts

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to obstruct the Russia investigation, a person briefed on the matter
said on Monday.
McGahn was the star witness to many of the most serious obstruction of
justice efforts by Trump detailed in special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIʼs
report. Democrats want to flesh out these accounts with the help of
McGahn himself, something that is plainly within Congressʼs authority.
Itʼs odd that Trump Worldʼs position continues to be that Muellerʼs report
totally exonerated Trump, but also that we must not hear from anyone
who helped produce that totally exonerating account ever again. But put
that aside. Can the White House keep McGahn from testifying?
As Politico reports, the Justice Department is preparing a legal opinion
justifying the move on executive privilege grounds. Itʼs true, as Politico
notes, that the long-standing position of presidential administrations in
both parties, including that of President Barack Obama, has been that
close presidential advisers have “absolute immunity” to congressional
subpoenas, to preserve presidential prerogatives.
But in this case, the legal theory is being used as part of a much broader
across-the-board strategy of maximal resistance to oversight on all
conceivable fronts. Trump himself has openly confirmed this, vowing to
fight “all” subpoenas, and weʼve also seen it applied in the
administrationʼs effort to keep Trumpʼs tax returns secret.
Still, as Eric Columbus, who served as a lawyer in the Obama
administration, points out, McGahn is a former employee of the White
House, which means that if he wants to testify to Congress, he can.
But Trump has an answer to this problem, as the Times further reports:
If Mr. McGahn ... defies the White House, Mr. McGahn could not only
damage his own career in Republican politics but also put his law firm,

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Jones Day, at risk of having the president urge his allies to withhold
their business. The firmʼs Washington practice is closely affiliated with
the party.
Thatʼs pretty remarkable: It is being discussed as a realistic possibility
that Trump would threaten to destroy both McGahnʼs career and the
business prospects of his law firm if he honors a legitimate congressional
subpoena designed to get to the bottom of an extraordinary accounting
of corruption and wrongdoing produced by a legitimate law enforcement
investigation.
That this was noted almost as a banal, unremarkable factor, observed
with barely a raised Timesian eyebrow, is itself an indication of how low
weʼve sunk here.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said President Trump engaged in impeachable behavior as shown by special
counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIʼs report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Reuters)
In this regard, the case of Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is instructive.
Over the weekend, Amash became the first Republican to declare that
Mueller documented impeachable offenses by Trump. This was greeted
with a furious diatribe from Trump himself, and even a primary challenger,
who insisted that Amash is “out of touch” with both “the truth" and “the
people he represents," which is to say, Amash has broken with the
alternate reality of this whole affair that Trump and his propaganda
machine have created in the minds of countless of his voters.
Republican lawmakers will be watching Amash closely, to gauge what
fate befalls those who dare to deviate from the sacred principle that
impunity and freedom from accountability for Trump must be prioritized
above all else. Similarly, if McGahn does defy Trumpʼs demand and
testifies before Congress, many members of the GOP establishment will
be closely watching to see what sort of professional price he pays.
Of course, if McGahn is cowed into doing Trumpʼs bidding, and refuses to

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testify, that bodes very badly for the rest of us.
If that happens, by the way, this battle will go to the courts, and this
might paradoxically further strengthen the case for Democrats launching
an impeachment inquiry. As Iʼve noted, an inquiry could strengthen the
legal hand of Democrats in forcing cooperation with their oversight
demands. Politico recently spelled out how court rulings buttress this
argument.
Indeed, Michael Conway, who served as a House lawyer during
Watergate, told me that the McGahn example is a particularly stark case.
As it is, Conway noted, the case for exerting executive privilege over
McGahnʼs testimony is particularly weak, because McGahn has already
testified on these matters at great length to Mueller. Adding an
impeachment inquiry would make it even weaker.
“Congress has issued a valid subpoena," Conway told me. “And courts
have said that when Congress is doing oversight, its power to enforce a
subpoena is not as strong as when itʼs doing an impeachment inquiry.”
On top of this, the ludicrousness of the executive privilege claim itself
could help build the political case for impeachment. Conway pointed out
that one component of one article of President Richard M. Nixonʼs
impeachment was a similar “improper use of executive privilege,”
exercised to prevent a congressional investigation of Nixonʼs wrongdoing,
just as is happening now.
Of course, if Democrats have privately determined to never pull that
trigger no matter what, this could all be moot. And if, at the same time,
McGahn doesnʼt testify out of fear of Trumpian retaliation, Trumpʼs
lawlessness will continue to expand into the vacuum created by
Democratic inaction.
Read more:

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Jennifer Rubin: Why Justin Amash stands alone
The Postʼs View: Could this be ... a Republican with backbone?
Max Boot: The GOP doesnʼt have to impeach Trump. But it also doesnʼt
have to nominate him.