It appears that former White House counsel Don McGahn’s defiance of Donald Trump went further beyond refusing to fire Robert Mueller, as the special counsel’s report alleges. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal report that the White House also asked McGahn “at least twice in the past month” to issue a statement declaring that Trump didn’t actually obstruct justice, as McGahn’s testimony suggested—but the former Trump lawyer declined to comply.

Per the Times, the White House made its first request of McGahn after receiving the Mueller report but before it was issued to the public. Realizing that the report included McGahn’s damning statements about the president—but left out McGahn telling investigators “that he believed Mr. Trump never obstructed justice”—the administration reached out to McGahn's lawyer and asked if he could go ahead and publicly declare that the president is an innocent man. “White House officials believed that Mr. McGahn asserting his belief publicly would calm the president and help the administration push back on the episodes that Mr. Mueller detailed in the obstruction section of the report,” the Times reports—suggesting that the Trump administration realized the Mueller report isn’t exactly the total exoneration of the president that Trump has claimed it to be. The Journal reports the request wasn't the first time that Trump and McGahn's lawyers had been in contact; Trump lawyers had also apparently reached out to McGahn's lawyer William Burck on two occasions to ask about McGahn's testimony and whether he had said the president had committed any crimes.

But McGahn, to quote a statement recounted in the Mueller report, apparently still didn't want to “do crazy shit” for Trump. The Journal reports that McGahn declined to provide the statement because he “didn’t want to weigh in on the totality of evidence in the report beyond his own testimony, and didn’t want to comment on his own testimony in isolation.” According to sources cited by the Journal, McGahn also believed his own opinion was irrelevant, seeing as how Attorney General William Barr had already weighed in and declared that Trump's behavior didn't amount to obstruction of justice.

“We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister,” Burck said in a statement about the request. “It was a request, professionally and cordially made.” McGahn's refusal naturally “angered” the president, who believed McGahn “showed disloyalty” by telling Mueller about the president's attempts to end his probe. The Trump team has subsequently gone on the attack against McGahn. The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently called McGahn “hopelessly confused” in a CNN interview. (Burck, the Journal notes, maintains that the report “accurately described” McGahn's testimony and called Giuliani's comments a “mystery.”)

McGahn's unwillingness to help Trump hasn't extended to his congressional testimony, though—which is likely to become even more of a central focus for lawmakers following Friday's dual reports. As the Mueller report's key witness, House Democrats have been eager to have McGahn testify since the report was released. McGahn, however, has fallen in line with the Trump administration's mass stonewalling efforts and refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for his testimony. Democrats, in turn, have threatened to hold McGahn in contempt if he doesn't comply with the subpoena by May 21. “I fully expect that the committee will hold Mr. McGahn in contempt if he fails to appear before the committee, unless the White House secures a court order directing otherwise,” House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler wrote in a letter to Burck. With the news out that Trump once again asked McGahn to intervene on his behalf—and McGahn refused to declare his innocence—that threat is sure to only intensify.

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