Trump wins appeal to block McGahn testimony

Source: Politico | February 28, 2020 | Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Gerstein

The ruling is a blow to House Democrats’ attempts to talk to former White House counsel Don McGahn, a key witness in the Russia probe.

President Donald Trump scored a major legal victory on Friday when a federal appeals court panel ruled Democrats have no right to hear testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s opinion overturned a lower court decision requiring McGahn’s testimony and told the judge presiding over the case to dismiss it outright. The ruling is a blow to House Democrats’ attempts to break the Trump administration’s intransigent stance that it can block Congress from talking to witnesses. McGahn was a key source of information for Robert Mueller and Democrats have been angling to secure an interview to find out what he told the special counsel.

The 2-1 ruling comes a little more than three weeks after Trump was acquitted in the Senate on largely unrelated impeachment charges involving his posture toward Ukraine. It’s also not necessarily final. Democrats are expected to appeal, and the case could face a fast-track Supreme Court review.

The opinion, written by GOP appointee Thomas Griffith, goes to the heart of long-running battles over the power balance between Congress and the White House that have played out during Trump’s tenure.

Echoing arguments Justice Department attorneys had made in the case, Griffith warned that allowing the House to use the courts to enforce the subpoena against McGahn would lead to a flood of hard-to-resolve suits pitting congressional imperatives against executive branch interests.

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