Report: Don McGahn's attorney told Trump's lawyers his client did 'not incriminate' the president

Don McGahn.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Over the last several days, White House Counsel Don McGahn's attorney has assured President Trump's legal team that McGahn never told Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators that Trump engaged in any wrongdoing, The Washington Post reports.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that Trump's lawyers knew very little about what McGahn told the special counsel during his first interview in November and in two subsequent meetings. Several people with knowledge of the matter told the Post that McGahn's attorney, Bill Burck, sent Trump's legal team an email stating, "He did not incriminate him," and relaying that McGahn said he did not see Trump commit any crimes and if he had, McGahn would have resigned.

Burck did stress that McGahn is just one witness out of many and he has no idea what other people told Mueller. Trump's former lawyers, John Dowd and Ty Cobb, urged McGahn to speak with Mueller last year, even though he thought they should claim attorney-client privilege, the Post reports. Dowd and Cobb believed that by cooperating with Mueller, the investigation would finish faster and it would keep Trump from having to answer Mueller's questions himself.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.