Senate Republicans on the Intelligence Committee blindsided Trump and his White House by not giving the advance notice on Donald Trump Jr. being subpoenaed.
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney complained to CBS’s Major Garrett, “I have no difficulty with bipartisanship, but to subpoena the president’s son without getting a head’s up is bad form.”
Mulvaney said that he didn’t know if Trump had been told and that it was possible but unlikely that if news of this sort reached the White House, he wouldn’t know about it.
Video of Mulvaney:
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The White House had no prepared reaction. Trump didn’t tweet about his son’s subpoena or mention it at his Florida rally, so the signs are strong that the White House had no idea that the subpoena was coming. Donald Trump Jr. perjured himself before Congress by lying about his knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow project. Trump Jr. claimed that he didn’t know anything about it, but former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said that he briefed Don Jr. and Ivanka on it ten times.
If Trump knew about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s plan to subpoena his son, he would have squashed it. The president would have gotten Mitch McConnell involved to kill the subpoena. The fact that Trump’s White House chief of staff had no advance notice suggests that the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee wanted to keep the subpoena a secret.
Innocent presidents don’t have subpoenas dropped on them by committees run by their own party.
Trump wasn’t told, because if he knew, he would try to obstruct the investigation, which is live and real-time proof of Donald Trump’s consistent and ongoing pattern of obstruction of Congress and justice.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
