Have we found the new Deep Throat?
Even after Richard Nixon was taken down partly by an anonymous informant nicknamed Deep Throat, decades passed before it was revealed that the informant was one of Nixon’s own people, FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. In the case of Donald Trump and his far more complex and evil criminal conspiracy, we may have already identified the Deep Throat character before Trump even goes down. More remarkably, that individual may still be working in Trump’s White House.
During Watergate, it was all about following the money. During Trump’s criminal scandal, for now at least, it’s largely about following the obstruction of justice. Several of Trump’s people have sold him out on this, to varying degrees. Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus turned over his own personal notes about Trump’s obstruction to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Everyone from Sean Spicer to Jeff Sessions to CIA Director Mike Pompeo has testified to Mueller about Trump’s obstruction, and since none of them left those interviews in handcuffs, we have to assume that they were cooperating witnesses.
But throughout all the documentation of Trump’s obstruction of justice crime spree, one name keeps popping up as the central character: White House Counsel Don McGahn. He’s the one who stopped Trump from relying on a self-incriminating memo as the basis for firing James Comey. He’s the one who stopped Trump from firing Mueller entirely. McGahn has been using the same attorney as Priebus in the Russia scandal all along, so because Priebus has been cooperating, that means McGahn has to have been cooperating all along as well. In fact it appears to be McGahn who turned over White House documents to Mueller which incriminated Trump on obstruction.
In the age of the internet and digital document production, it may well be impossible to keep a secret for long. It’s part of why Donald Trump’s criminal scandal and attempted coverup are being exposed so much more swiftly than was the case with Watergate. So perhaps it’s fitting that, if Don McGahn truly is the Deep Throat of the Trump scandal, he’s been doing it not in secret, but in plain sight all along.
