WH Counsel Avoided Watergate Mistake That Sank Nixon

counsel despite directives from the President. Here to tell us more is Gregg Farrell, Bloomberg News legal reporter. Greg Would you say that McGann played one of the most significant roles in the Muller Report Volume two? Um? Yet, Juna, I'd say he would. He did. Um. He was at the center of the President's many attempts to get rid of Muller, And as we read over and over again throughout that four page report, he declined didn't follow up.

Didn't you know, I just didn't follow up in that directive. So I think he saved Trump from what would have been an action that clearly would have pushed this from a judgment call on obstruction into an actionable crime. So many legal experts have been crediting the fact that President Trump did not testify and wasn't even subpoenaed to a

legal strategy by his defense team. What role did McGann play in that strategy, Well, UMU, as our reporting a show going back, UM, I don't think McGann favored that originally, but once the plan was set in place and he bought into it. Uh, that combined with his own willingness to testify quite openly and thoroughly with you know, corroborating evidence of contemporaneous notes, ended up you know, being a big benefit to the president also, uh in terms of

you know, basically cooperating. That's uh, rather than forcing you know, Mueller to go to court to try to extract either you know, uh you have some things that could have been questionably claimed as executive privilege. I think it kept the presidential powers from being constrained by any negative court rulings. So that was another aspect of the strategy, was not to go to war. The president's legal team with with Mueller, and I'm sure they had their own very distinct wanting

to defend Donald Trump goal. But another after effect of that is that presidential powers were not basically defined or clipped by any kind of averse Court decision. Will presidential powers if the House goes through in any number of committees with trying to subpoena the report, Will that take into account presidential powers in any respect? No right. And initially it seems to be it's going to be a

battle over getting the report the full court. Nothing but the report, if you will, just everything that's including the redacted stuff. Um. And and that's step one. That's a that's a different battle. Now we're already seeing this is a separate event. But we're already seeing today that the House committees that have wanted to subpoena the president's basically his his tax accountants. Um. You know, the president plans

to fight that, So that will be a battle. Um. You know, I'm not sure if that's going to fall under the category of presidential power. I think it would, So I think about it like that, which is now separate from Mueller, between Congress and the President will go down that road of you know, leading to basically to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in on whether or not Congress, you know,

Congressional committee. Uh. Subpoena can basically force the president to divulge his personal financial records from his pre presidential time. So Greg does does mcgant have the same expansive view of president show power that the Attorney General William Barr has that unitary executive idea? Yes, that's our reading of this. Bar comes came of age during the Reagan administration where

he worked, and that was a big push. Uh. And one of the fellows we quoted, the professor about presidential power. He was tutored by ed Meath. Ed Meae explained to him how the whole process during the Reagan administration was to restore a lot of the powers of the presidency that had been stripped away after Watergate. McGann is a bit younger by more than a decade, so he did not come of age in the Reagan administration. But it's

clear we used this quote in the story. Uh. It's clear that he admired, you know, the direction in which they were going, and particularly Judge Robert Bork. And as he said, uh, you know, he he aspired to be you know, Judge Robert Bork, not Saturday Night Massacre Bork, which is an interesting insight into you know these you know, the reasons why he didn't um push your head was getting rid of moment and uh so that's consistent with that.

So the report, there's a lot of legal theory in the report explaining of legal theories, and they took a different view, I believe, of the unitary executive idea than than bar and McGann have correct. So the the notion um first of all, the notion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Uh, you know, Mueller's team contested that

is that they did not accept that. They gave a very interesting reasoning for why they decided not to pursue an obstruction guard charge against the president and to stand down in that they did not want to basically put the president in a position where he could not access the court system and defend himself, as every one of us has that right if we're accused of a crime. So that was an interesting it was decision making and legal theory as to why not to pursue that. And

it's for or as the unitary executive. Did they take that on head on? Um? Not head on? But I think it's fair to read between the lines and UH that that they do not subscribe to that. Um that you know, they felt they could have subpoena them, but they chose not to. So I think that's that's by they avoided a battle over this by not you know, by decided not to subpoena to the president and forced

this testimony. UM. I don't think. I think you know, the Mueller team's legal reasoning, uh is not consistent with the unitary executive theory. But at the same time, Mueller, unlike Jim Comey, I think, was not willing to go beyond what the very narrow confines of his scope work. He did not want to make himself for his legal reasoning the center of the story, if you know what I mean, I do. Greg, great, great article too, Thank you so much. The article is presidential power gets the

booster shot, no matter Mueller's view. And that's Greg Barrell. He's a Bloomberg News Lee Will reporter. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg