I strongly recommend the reading of this this letter, especially the final paragraph. For one thing, this states a real legal analysis, and shreds the argument made by McGahn's lawyer and the DOJ (this is clearly going to be a recurring theme). For another, it points out that McGahn has to appear tomorrow or be in contempt, whether he thinks he has a privilege protection or not.NEW: Chairman @RepJerryNadler response letter to former White House counsel Don McGahn. https://t.co/rw977z0qNw pic.twitter.com/HCL29eahHM— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) May 21, 2019
An analogy we all know from popular culture would be a witness asserting their 5th Amendment rights. You can use that to protect yourself from testifying; you can't use it to refuse a subpoena to appear.
McGahn is back in that gap between the rock and the hard place. His argument that he's caught between two branches of government doesn't allow him to choose what he will do tomorrow morning. He is going to testify sooner or later.
And when I told you the court moved fast, I wasn't just whistlin' 'Dixie':
“What I wasn’t expecting necessarily, Lawrence is that it would be handed down so quickly. Let me tell you, after 30 years in courts — including decades in the courts of Washington, D.C. — rarely do things happen quickly, but the fact that judge meta handed down this decision in six days is pretty remarkable,” he noted.
“I do think the sort of dam is breaking at this point. And this is a great day for transparency and for accountability, but a really bad day for the president’s seemingly endless attempts to cover up his own misconduct,” he concluded.
I'm telling you: Trump has no legal arguments, only bluster. None of his lawyers, not even the DOJ, can give him the legal protection he needs. Today is the day the legal walls started visibly closing in. The next round starts in a courtroom on Wednesday. I expect the same reception to the same arguments.
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