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Trump’s former White House counsel Don McGahn will possibly testify on the former president’s attempts to intervene in the Russia investigation next week

WASHINGTON D.C., May 21, 2019 -- Then White House counsel Don McGahn reacts in the audience during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, on Sept. 4, 2018. The White House on Monday instructed former counsel Don McGahn to defy a congressional subpoena and skip a hearing scheduled for Tuesday relating to the Russia probe. (Xinhua/Ting Shen) (Xinhua/Ting Shen via Getty Images)
Don McGahn.

  • Former White House counsel Don McGahn will likely testify before the House Judiciary Committee next week.
  • McGahn’s testimony will touch on whether Trump obstructed justice during the Mueller investigation on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
  • His testimony comes two years after he ignored an initial subpoena to testify on Trump.
  • See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Former White House counsel Don McGahn has finally agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and it will likely happen next week, according to The New York Times.

McGahn’s testimony will take place in a closed-door session. It is likely to touch on Trump’s attempts to intervene in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and will examine the extent of the former president’s interference.

The Times wrote that McGahn’s testimony had been delayed while lawyers for House Democrats, the DOJ, and McGahn waited to see how the former president’s camp would react. This is because McGahn’s deal to testify hinged upon there being no active legal challenge to his participation.

According to The Times, Trump had initially said he would intervene, but a lawyer for the former president announced last week that he would not be challenging McGahn on testifying.

According to a May 12 court filing, the testimony will be limited to “publicly available portions of the Mueller Report” and whether those portions “accurately reflected Mr. McGahn’s statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and whether those statements were truthful.”

McGahn was a key witness in the Mueller investigation. Insider reported that his name appears more than 160 times in the special counsel’s final 448-page report.

The testimony is happening at long last after a two-year fight to get McGahn in front of the House Judiciary Committee to find out whether Trump obstructed justice during the Mueller investigation.

In 2019, McGahn managed to dodge a subpoena from the Judiciary panel. At the time, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice fought that subpoena, and then-president Trump directed McGahn to not show up at his hearing, claiming that administration officials had “absolute immunity.”

The Biden administration’s DOJ and Congress struck a deal earlier this month for him to testify. A transcript of the McGahn interview will be released after his testimony, according to a court filing.

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