Trump claims he never told McGahn to fire Mueller, but they say otherwise

President Donald Trump insisted on Thursday that he never told former White House Counsel Donald McGahn to fire special counsel Robert Mueller weeks after he was appointed in 2017 — an event reported in the media and described in Mueller’s report.

“As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so,” Trump wrote.

As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so. If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself. Nevertheless,….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2019

….Mueller was NOT fired and was respectfully allowed to finish his work on what I, and many others, say was an illegal investigation (there was no crime), headed by a Trump hater who was highly conflicted, and a group of 18 VERY ANGRY Democrats. DRAIN THE SWAMP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2019

Trump’s current and former attorneys have made the same claim in recent media appearances since the publication of Mueller’s redacted report last week.

“I think the president simply wanted McGahn to call Rosenstein and have vetted,” Trump’s former attorney John Dowd told Fox News on Monday. Dowd added: “The president was entitled to do that.”

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, told “Fox News Sunday” that McGahn was “confused” about what took place.

Those statements run counter to Mueller’s nearly 450-page report, which detailed how McGahn received at least two phone calls with Trump in which the president “directed him to call” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to have Mueller “removed.”

The first of those calls took place on June 17, 2017, just days after The Washington Post reported the special counsel was investigating whether Trump had obstructed justice as part of its probe into Russian election interference.

McGahn recalled Trump said something along the lines of, “You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod,” Mueller’s report said. McGahn said he told the president he would see what he could do and did not act on the request.

Trump followed up on the request more directly in the second call, saying something like, “Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can’t be the Special Counsel” and “Mueller has to go,” McGahn recalled, according to the report.

“Call me back when you do it,” McGahn recalled Trump telling him, the report said.

In response, McGahn decided he would resign “because he did not want to participate in events that he described as akin to the Saturday Night Massacre,” Mueller wrote. McGahn ultimately did not do so.

After Trump’s demand was reported in the news media, he denied ever making it and insisted McGahn dispute press reports, Mueller wrote. Trump said he merely wanted McGahn to inform Rosenstein of Mueller’s supposed conflicts of interest — conflicts that McGahn and other advisers told Trump were “silly” and “not real,” the report said.

Mueller wrote that Trump’s denials were “contrary to the evidence and suggest the President’s awareness that the direction to McGahn could be seen as improper.”

The “evidence shows that the President was not just seeking an examination of whether conflicts existed but instead was looking to use asserted conflicts as a way to terminate the Special Counsel,” Mueller wrote.

In August, after news first broke of McGahn’s upcoming departure from the White House, Trump again raised the issue, tweeting that he “liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions.”

After Mueller’s report was released, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn to testify before the committee — a move that Trump called “ridiculous” on Wednesday.

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020.”

On the broader issue of whether Trump obstructed justice, Mueller wrote in his report that if his investigators “had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.”

“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote, later adding that Trump’s “efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”