W.H. Counsel Is Cooperating Extensively In Russia Probe

News & Politics
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[SIZE=7]White House Counsel Is Cooperating Extensively In Russia Probe[/SIZE]

Don McGahn reportedly feared Trump was setting him up.

Don McGahn, the White House counsel, has been cooperating extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation largely in order to shield himself from charges, The New York Times reported Saturday.

McGahn has even divulged information that investigators would not have otherwise been aware of, such as President Donald Trump’s push to fire the special counsel, the paper reported. The Times cited interviews with a dozen current and former White House staffers regarding interviews with McGahn spanning some 30 hours.

The attorney’s cooperation stemmed from an initial recommendation by the president’s original lawyers John Dowd and Ty Cobb, who argued that if Trump has nothing to hide, why not cooperate fully? But McGahn had a change of heart.

He and his own attorney became suspicious of Trump’s desire to allow his White House counsel to speak so freely with Mueller, who is investigating whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

McGahn began to fear that Trump was setting him up to take the blame for any possible obstruction charges, according to the Times. And so he started talking more ― to protect himself.

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The paper estimates that McGahn gave investigators “a mix” of damaging and favorable information on Trump, noting that as White House counsel, McGahn serves the office of the presidency, not Trump personally.

McGahn is especially useful to Mueller because he has been “directly involved in nearly every episode they are scrutinizing to determine whether the president obstructed justice,” the paper said. Those included the president’s push to reinstall Attorney General Jeff Sessions as head of the probe, his decision to fire the FBI Director James Comey and his decision to fire national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In a post to his personal Twitter account, the president asserted that he was actually behind McGahn’s cooperation.

“I allowed White House Counsel Don McGahn, and all other requested members of the White House Staff, to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel,” the post said, claiming more than a million pages of documents had been turned over to investigators.

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McGahn and Trump have at times clashed. Multiple news outlets reported that McGahn threatened to quit in June 2017 when Trump ordered him to fire the special counsel. But the Times now describes a distant relationship between the two men, with McGahn calling the president “King Kong” behind his back.

The White House counsel and his attorney eventually came to determine they had “overestimated the amount of thought” Trump put into his legal strategy, the Times reported, quelling McGahn’s fears.

Trump’s current personal legal team is attempting to negotiate narrow terms for an interview with Mueller. Although the president believes he can clear his name, he has yet to sit down to an interview in the Russia investigation he so frequently mocks.

This story has been updated with Trump’s response on Twitter.

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[SIZE=7]ICE Detains Man Driving Pregnant Wife To Deliver Their Baby[/SIZE]
Joel Arrona-Lara was stopped at a San Bernardino gas station en route to a local hospital.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday detained a California man who was taking his pregnant wife to a hospital to deliver the baby, multiple outlets have reported.

ICE officers in two SUVs stopped Joel Arrona-Lara at a San Bernardino gas station, a Los Angeles CBS affiliate reported. While his wife, Maria del Carmen Venegas, was able to provide identification, Arrona-Lara was not, but the couple offered to retrieve it from their home nearby. Venegas told Univision they tried to explain that they left their house in a hurry. But the ICE officers immediately took Arrona-Lara into custody.

Venegas was left behind at the gas station and appeared visibly upset in security footage. She then drove the rest of the way herself, giving birth to the couple’s son by Caesarian section alone.

An ICE representative confirmed the detention in a statement to HuffPost describing Arrona-Lara as a Mexican citizen living in the United States without documents.

As of Friday, Venegas and the newborn ― her fifth child ― were still at the hospital without Arrona-Lara.

“I feel very bad right now,” Venegas told CBS2 News while holding her son. “My husband needs to be here. He had to wait for his son for so long, and someone just took him away.”

She told Univision that her husband had never been in trouble with law enforcement. He hadn’t even received a ticket, she added.

“We don’t know what happened,” she said.

Arrona-Lara is being held at an immigrant detention center in downtown Los Angeles, Univision reported. ICE stated that the Executive Office for Immigration Review has begun removal proceedings.

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“ICE continues to focus its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security,” the agency said in a statement.

“ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy. However, ICE will no longer exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. All of those in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”

Emilio Amaya García, director of the Community Services Center of San Bernardino who is representing Arrona-Lara, told Univision that the incident illustrates the Trump administration’s “lack of sensitivity” in enforcing its zero tolerance policy on immigration.

“In this case, not only could they have endangered the life of the mother, but also that of the child, who is a citizen of this country,” García told the outlet in Spanish.

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