From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
Sometimes, I find it amazing the things that people feel obligated to do over the things they are genuinely supposed to do. Take former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who defied a subpoena out of a sense of obligation, perhaps, to President Trump, despite the real possibility of being held in contempt of Congress and any penalties that might pertain to that.
It’s questionable that Trump has a legitimate reason to direct McGahn not to testify–he is a former, not current, employee of the White House, and he would have been questioned regarding things he already discussed in about 30 hours of questioning by the Special Counsel’s team. I’m just an old D-list blogger, but that doesn’t look like his testimony should fall under anything like executive privilege to me. It seems less questionable, though, that Trump has a less-legitimate purpose in having McGahn refuse to testify; one of the more disturbing items in the Mueller report is that McGahn was told by Trump to fire Mueller, didn’t do it, and then was advised by the White House to publicly state that Trump never tried to obstruct justice (even if it seems like he knew Trump did).
If requesting McGahn dodge the hearing is another form of obstruction, we’ve got like, three layers of obstruction, right there.