The courage of Don McGahn – Washington Examiner

There are many types of lawyers, but two in particular: cautious and courageous. President Trump is very fortunate he got one of the courageous lawyers as his counsel at the White House. I’m referring to Don McGahn.

Trump ought to be oozing with gratitude for everything McGahn did for him and the country in his two years as presidential counsel. But gratefulness isn’t a virtue Trump practices.

The president has lately faulted McGahn for revealing too much in 30 hours of questioning by special counsel Robert Mueller and his gang. But McGahn was only acting in accordance with Trump’s own strategy in dealing with the Mueller investigation, a strategy the president seems to have forgotten.

The White House would be an open book, though Trump didn’t offer to be interrogated in person. Every request by Mueller for documents or witnesses would be granted. This amounted to the strongest possible evidence that there was no cover-up and that Trump was not guilty of wrongdoing. Indeed, Mueller told Trump’s lawyers not a single one of those questioned had lied.

It took ingenuity for the president to come up with a quibble for McGahn. He complained about aides who took notes of their conversations with him. And in McGahn’s case, the Mueller report noted McGahn took extensive notes. This irritated Trump, causing him to insist that “lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” McGahn replied he was a “real lawyer” who valued a written record.

But Trump’s ingratitude went beyond his whining about what McGahn said to the special counsel. When his presidency ends, his most enduring accomplishment is most likely to be his transformation of the federal courts. A liberal stronghold after eight years of the Obama presidency, conservatives are gaining significant ground, and Trump has played a role in this ideological transformation. After all, he’s responsible for judicial nominations. But the mastermind and manager of the effort was McGahn. He was in the key position, steps away from the Oval Office and well connected with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky.

And when he stepped down as White House counsel, he left behind a careful and efficient system for nominating and confirming conservatives to the Supreme Court and U.S. appellate courts. It functions brilliantly.

Would this have happened without McGahn? Not a chance. Trump wasn’t familiar with the conservative legal community outside of his sister’s sitting on the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals. McGahn and his chief ally, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, filled the gap. They first conferred with Trump months before he had locked up the Republican presidential nomination.

McGahn is credited with the idea of compiling a list of conservative judges, law professors, and legal scholars from which Trump might choose a nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. He later promised to pick from the list, which led an army of center-right voters wary of Trump to vote for him. Absent that, Trump wouldn’t be president.

The list was expanded after Trump won the election to include Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court. And it was expanded again with potential conservative nominees to the federal appeals courts, one judicial rung below the high court.

Now the list is getting younger and loaded with more women. Thank McGahn and his cohort Leo for that.

McGahn’s courage? The media has been thrilled by the account in the Mueller report of his refusal to follow Trump’s orders to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to remove Mueller as special counsel. McGahn packed his bags to resign and prepared to leave the White House. Yes, that took courage.

So does the fact the list has never been diluted with nonconservatives. In 2016, that wasn’t a fear. Trump needed votes from moderates and conservatives. Leaning left wouldn’t attract them.

Since then, the list has produced Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and two dozen conservatives for the appeals courts. Making the list less conservative has not been possible, at least not with McGahn there together with Leo.

One more thing. McGahn had the job of keeping GOP senators in line, and this wasn’t as easy as it sounds. With Democrats united in opposition to Trump nominees, Republicans couldn’t afford to lose more than two votes. McGahn made sure they never did.

McGahn achieved something critical that his boss has yet to: He was trusted on Capitol Hill. And at the White House, he was better at his job than the president deserved.

Fred Barnes, a Washington Examiner senior columnist, was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.