Don McGahn just made the wrong choice, and now all hell has broken loose
For reasons known only to him, former White House Counsel Don McGahn – who already sold out Donald Trump to Robert Mueller, and clearly has no allegiance to Trump – is caving to Trump’s illegal order not to show up and testify tomorrow before the House Judiciary Committee. This is the end of McGahn’s life as he knows it, and if the past few hours of twists and turns in the House Democratic caucus are any indication, it’s the beginning of Trump’s impeachment.
The chain reaction came swiftly. Several members of the House Judiciary Committee, including Chairman Jerry Nadler, privately urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi to begin an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Some of the committee members outright publicly called for impeachment. Although Nadler eventually deferred to Pelosi’s desire to let the court battles over evidence and witnesses advance further first, it’s now clear that an impeachment inquiry is coming soon – and the dismantling of Don McGahn is coming even sooner.
Tomorrow morning, the House Judiciary Committee is going ahead with the McGahn hearing, without McGahn himself. Considering how eager this committee and its chairman are to make a move against Trump’s lawlessness, you can expect them to take it out on McGahn tomorrow, who will be in contempt of Congress when he fails to show up. Will Nadler settle for hitting McGahn with massive financial penalties that’ll bankrupt him? Will Nadler actually send the House Sergeant At Arms after McGahn tomorrow? We don’t know. But we do know that it’s going to resemble the kind of response that the Resistance has been increasingly demanding.
So here we go. Tomorrow’s hearing should be nothing short of a doozy. One key thing to watch for: before the William Barr hearings, polls showed that 39% to 45% of Americans wanted impeachment. After the Barr debacle, that number jumped to the 45% to 49% range. Tomorrow’s McGahn no-show, and the resulting fallout, should send those numbers even higher. We’re on the verge of the majority of Americans wanting impeachment – and once it crosses that threshold, we expect Pelosi will give an impeachment inquiry the greenlight.
