Here’s the thing about that Don McGahn bombshell
It’s easy enough to verify yesterday’s New York Times bombshell report that White House Counsel Don McGahn has spent the past ten months cooperating with Robert Mueller behind Donald Trump’s back. In fact Palmer Report did verify it ten months ago, based entirely on information that was publicly available at the time. There’s nothing new here. But here’s the thing about the NY Times article in question. Parts of it are, well, false.
The gist of the article is correct. But as is so often the case with the mainstream media, the Times’ overwhelming desire to give voice to “both sides” has led to the article containing absurd false claims that have gone unchallenged. For starters there’s this paragraph, which contains an obvious lie from Donald Trump’s former attorney John Dowd:
“It was an extraordinary cooperation — more cooperation than in any major case — no president has ever been more cooperative than this,” Mr. Dowd said, adding that Mr. Mueller knew as far back as October, when he received many White House documents, that the president did not break the law.
Dowd simply made up that claim, and yet the New York Times printed it without pointing out that it was obviously made up. But the real sin of this NY Times article is this fictional sentence:
Mr. Mueller has told the president’s lawyers that he will follow Justice Department guidance that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Rather than charge Mr. Trump if he finds evidence of wrongdoing, he is more likely to write a report that can be sent to Congress for lawmakers to consider impeachment proceedings.
Bullshit. Even if this was Robert Mueller’s position, and there’s no evidence that it is, he would never stupidly give away his leverage by admitting to the opposition that he was taking an option off the table. Mueller never said these words to Trump’s team, and anyone with a triple digit IQ can figure out that he never said it. Yet here it is, printed in the newspaper of record, simply because one side – despite being known liars – made the claim. With all due respect to the good work that the New York Times does on a good day, if it’s going to print these kinds of false claims from Trump’s team, it needs to clarify that they are in fact false claims. This is roughly as absurd as quoting someone, unchallenged, who claims the sky is yellow.
