<i>[mellow electronic music]</i> <i>MAGGIE: During Donald Trump’s first years in office,</i> <i>the country was consumed by the Mueller investigation.</i> <i>TRUMP: This Russia thing with Trump and Russia</i> <i>is a made-up story.</i> <i>There is no collusion. No collusion, no obstruction.</i> <i>We had nothing to do with Russia.</i> <i>This is a hoax.</i> <i>The entire thing has been a witch hunt.</i> <i>MAGGIE: It consumed our lives as reporters too.</i> <i>TRUMP: A bad thing for our country.</i> Very, very bad thing for our country. <i>MAGGIE: But in the shadows</i> <i>of that counterintelligence investigation,</i> <i>something else was happening.</i> <i>Something much more durable.</i> <i>Something much more dramatic.</i> <i>And the role of one man, a man few even recognized,</i> <i>was central to all of it.</i> - D-O-N M-C-G-A-H-N. <i>MAGGIE: As Trump’s White House Counsel,</i> <i>Don McGahn had one of the most difficult jobs in the country:</i> <i>to keep the president within the bounds of the law.</i> <i>But he took the job and put up with the job</i> <i>because he had another goal.</i> <i>MITCH MCCONNELL: Don McGahn put the pedal to the metal</i> to achieve something we thought was important for the country. <i>MAGGIE: More than a hundred federal judicial seats</i> <i>needed to be filled,</i> <i>and McGahn was intent on filling</i> <i>these lifetime appointments as fast as he could.</i> - These judges are going to be handing down rulings that will just, I think, cause whiplash with the public. <i>Abortion. Voting rights.</i> Environmental laws. The Affordable Care Act. - Please raise your right hand. - Do you affirm— - The testimony you are about to give— - Will be the truth— - The whole truth— - And nothing but the truth so help you God? - So help you God? - So help you God? - I do. - I do. - I do. <i>STEVE BANNON: Why the left is triggered by Trump</i> is because they understand they’re in a Kafkaesque nightmare, that Donald Trump is going to be in their personal lives 10, 20, and 30 years from now. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>And the reason is Don McGahn.</i> <i>[light electronic music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MAGGIE: Any story that goes to either successes</i> <i>of the Trump administration, or what happened</i> during the timeframe of the Mueller Report, Don McGahn is right at the middle. <i>MICHAEL: The thing about McGahn</i> <i>is sort of the contradictions.</i> In many ways, he’s the ultimate Washington insider. <i>On the other hand, he hates the establishment.</i> <i>He hates elites.</i> <i>He is not the type of person who is going</i> to want to go to Washington cocktail parties. <i>He’s really into ‘80s rock music.</i> <i>He dresses up and plays in cover bands.</i> <i>TOM DAVIS: It breaks the stereotype.</i> Republicans come in all different sizes and shapes and colors. Don, he’s not an Ivy League guy. A lot of the people in these positions, to move up in law firms, your educational pedigree is a way up. Don didn’t have that. He was kinda up from the streets. Kinda hardscrabble in that sense. <i>MAGGIE: McGahn grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey.</i> <i>He came of age during the Reagan era,</i> <i>when Republicans were pushing back</i> <i>against the big government social programs of the ‘70s.</i> <i>REAGAN: This is, as I said, a time of renewal.</i> <i>We’re for limited government.</i> It is the best way of insuring personal liberty. [applause] - I think that’s where Don McGahn got this whole burning passion that this apparatus of the government was too— it was too much of a nanny state, and that was holding back the animal spirits of capitalism. The animal spirits of creative destruction. <i>That’s the spirit that drove him and animated him.</i> <i>And particularly, this thing of just the oppressive nature</i> <i>of an overweening government.</i> McGahn was at the— was the tip of spear in fighting that. You know, I’m Irish. He’s Irish. - I’ve heard that. - We like the fight. <i>MAGGIE: And the fight was against big government</i> <i>to dismantle federal regulations from the inside.</i> <i>MCGAHN: The greatest threat to the rule of law</i> <i>is the ever-expanding regulatory state.</i> And the most effective bulwark against that threat is a strong judiciary. <i>♪ ♪</i> TIM MCILWAIN: There’s a certain swagger, in high school of a jock. It’s a stereotype, right? He never had that. He’s not someone that brags. He’s not someone that’s gonna come into the room and sort of tell you what his skills are. I think a coach had seen him kicking and realized, “God, he’s really good.” He brought him out, concealed his face, and had him kick. And then they—he sort of revealed who it was, and they were like, “Oh my God.” You know? “That’s Don McGahn. You know, he’s going to be our new kicker.” <i>MICHAEL: Even in high school, he was someone who was—</i> <i>not like an outsider,</i> <i>but he was always a little different.</i> <i>He’s on the football team, but he’s the kicker.</i> <i>He’s playing hockey, but he’s the goalie,</i> and taking flying rubber discs in his face. - Football players, it comes down to the— with kickers and quarterbacks, they’re kinda like tea bags, right? You don’t know what you have until they’re in hot water. It says a lot about who he is now. Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, you can’t deny this guy had more heat on him than anyone. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MICHAEL: In one of their first meetings,</i> <i>McGann comes up from Washington,</i> <i>and he goes and meets Trump at Trump Tower.</i> - We’re sitting in the 26th floor in Trump’s office. <i>Don comes in for a meeting. Trump is at his desk.</i> <i>Corey takes a seat to face all of us.</i> <i>Allen Weisselberg.</i> <i>Michael Cohen.</i> <i>Me.</i> We get to the juicy part of the meeting. Trump looks directly at him and he goes, “So what do you charge an hour?” And Don immediately answers, “My hourly rate is $800 an hour.” “No shit. Good for you.” That’s Donald Trump’s reaction. <i>MICHAEL: They finish their meeting and Trump, he says,</i> “Pictures? Pictures?” You know? “All right, let’s have pictures.” And McGahn says, “No, I don’t want to have a picture.” <i>To Trump, that’s like, “Well, hey, wait, wait.</i> Why wouldn’t you want to have a picture with me?” <i>MAGGIE: McGann took the job,</i> <i>giving legal advice to the fledgling campaign.</i> <i>But it was never just about Trump.</i> <i>REPORTER: Very sad, breaking news to bring you</i> <i>at the top of the hour.</i> <i>REPORTER: Supreme Court Justice</i> <i>Antonin Scalia died today.</i> <i>REPORTER: A political battle will begin almost immediately.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> - Following Scalia’s death, the senate majority leader Mitch McConnell decides that he’s not going to allow President Obama to fill the seat. <i>MCCONNELL: The very night I made the call</i> on the Scalia vacancy was a presidential debate. <i>And Don wisely gave him a couple of names</i> <i>that would resonate with those of us</i> <i>who think that a federalist society approach</i> to judicial appointment is a good idea. ANNOUNCER: Please join us and the candidates on our stage in a moment of silence for Justice Antonin Scalia. - Don’s idea was to mention Diane Sykes and Bill Pryor. It was a little bit novel, and a little bit entrepreneurial. - We could have a Diane Sykes or you could have a Bill Pryor. We have some fantastic people. - They were very well-known quantities in the conservative movement. People knew who they were. <i>That was really the first time that names came out.</i> <i>Fast forward, we had our meeting,</i> and that was really where all of this began to crystallize. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>At Don’s instruction,</i> <i>we all entered through the underground garage,</i> so that we didn’t create a big scene outside. The president spoke for the first few minutes, and then there was this sorta pregnant pause. I decided to just say, “So I gather you want to talk about judges?” Question mark. And then it was shortly thereafter that a list was finalized. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MCGAHN: We’re going to appoint justices to the Supreme Court</i> <i>who will uphold</i> <i>and defend the constitution of the United States.</i> <i>RANDY BARNETT: We saw something we’ve never seen before:</i> A presidential nominee commit himself to picking judges and justices off a particular list that we get to see in advance. That’s never happened in my lifetime. - How significant was that list to Donald Trump’s getting the nomination, and ultimately his election? - It ended up being the single biggest issue that brought Republicans home to somebody they were largely troubled by for one reason or another. <i>MCGAHN: In my lifetime,</i> <i>I cannot remember a presidential election</i> <i>that turned so critically on the role of judges.</i> The time has come to face the behemoth. <i>[cheers and applause]</i> <i>MCGAHN: I pledge to every citizen of our land</i> <i>that I will be president for all Americans.</i> <i>ALL: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!</i> <i>TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much.</i> <i>MAGGIE: Donald Trump is not an ideologue.</i> <i>Donald Trump is a transactionalist.</i> And so at the end of the day, he recognized the transaction of getting elected was going to rely on convincing conservative voters that he was going to appoint justices who they wanted to see appointed. <i>TRUMP: While the campaign is over,</i> <i>our work on this movement</i> <i>is now really just beginning.</i> <i>REPORTER: Donald Trump comes into the White House</i> <i>with unprecedented business conflicts.</i> <i>REPORTER: His transition team is racked</i> <i>by infighting and disarray.</i> <i>REPORTER: Ethical missteps, policy confusion.</i> - You’re talking about somebody who got elected having spent almost no time thinking about what the job entailed, and thinking only about what it meant to win. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>TRUMP: We’re going to win so much,</i> <i>you may even get tired of winning!</i> <i>MAGGIE: He needed people like the Don McGahns of the world</i> to help guide him. <i>REPORTER: Don McGahn will be the White House Counsel.</i> <i>It’s going to be an extraordinarily important job.</i> <i>MICHAEL: McGahn says, “I’ll be White House Counsel,</i> <i>but I want to make the decisions</i> <i>on who the judges are.</i> <i>I’m going to bring them to you,</i> and we’re going to move as fast as we can to fill the federal judiciary with folks in this specific conservative ideological view of the law.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MCGAHN: It’s a part of a larger plan, I suppose.</i> Every pick matters. The president wants strong and smart judges, who will apply the law as written. <i>MAGGIE: This wasn’t a normal role</i> <i>for a White House Counsel.</i> <i>But these were his terms, and Trump went for it.</i> Donald Trump likes people when he thinks they’re winning for him, and in that moment, Don McGahn was winning for him. <i>But all deals come at a cost.</i> <i>Especially with this president.</i> <i>It was pretty clear, once Donald Trump was</i> <i>actually sworn into office, that he was going to be</i> an uncontrollable client for a White House Counsel. <i>SEAN SPICER: The president asked for, and received,</i> General Flynn’s resignation. <i>TRUMP: I think it’s very, very unfair.</i> <i>FLYNN: I should not be involved.</i> <i>TRUMP: How do you take a job and then recuse yourself?</i> <i>What kind of a man is this?</i> <i>When he told me, “You are not under investigation.”</i> <i>Which I knew anyway. It’s extremely unfair.</i> <i>MICHAEL: How hard is it to be White House Counsel</i> under a more typical president? - It’s a difficult job, because the, you know, White House is an intense place. The White House Counsel provides the president with legal advice about how the presidency can be managed within legal boundaries. Now, that has obviously come under tremendous pressure in an administration in which Donald Trump believes that the White House Counsel ought to be, in effect, the adjunct to his personal defense team. You have to make a fundamental decision. Can you represent the US properly with a client like Donald Trump? <i>MAGGIE: Don McGahn was known to refer</i> <i>to Donald Trump as King Kong, or Kong.</i> “Kong is raging today,” he would say to other staff members. <i>Donald Trump is not an easy man to work for.</i> <i>He has fits of temper. He curses a lot.</i> <i>He can be pretty verbally abusive.</i> <i>You have to decide, as every person who works for him does,</i> can you survive this? Is it worth it? Dan McGahn clearly decided that the—the positives outweighed the negatives. <i>MCGAHN: There’s a reason why President Trump asked me</i> <i>to be his lawyer.</i> <i>MAGGIE: So on the one hand, you had Don McGahn</i> <i>dealing with sort of the worst of Donald Trump.</i> And on the other, you had McGahn on the cusp of a huge victory, which was getting Neil Gorsuch nominated to the Supreme Court. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>NEIL GORSUCH: I will do all my powers permit</i> <i>to be a faithful servant</i> <i>to the constitution and laws of this great country.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MCGAHN: This president delivered on his promise,</i> <i>and I think he hit a home run there with Justice Gorsuch.</i> <i>I am very proud,</i> yet humbled to have played a small role in that. <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MAGGIE: This was a victory.</i> <i>MICHAEL: He had power to actually pull the levers</i> in an extremely significant way. And I think if you’re him, and you’ve made it there, you’re going to do everything you can, if you’re a true believer, to stay in the ring. <i>MAGGIE: On the tails of the Gorsuch confirmation,</i> <i>McGahn found ways to fast track nominees</i> <i>for lower federal courts too,</i> <i>including at the appellate court level,</i> <i>where tens of thousands of cases are filed every year.</i> - The way that Don McGahn has revolutionized the role of White House Counsel is he’s like, “I’m here. I have the president’s ear, and I’m going to use my proximity to the president to advance this one project in particular.” - If I’m the average American and I’m hearing this, how has my life changed because of this? Abortion, affirmative action? - Voting rights. Environmental laws. The EPA will basically become powerless to enforce any type of environmental regulatory standards on polluters in this country. - Wall Street regulation? - I don’t think Democrats appreciate the fact that Donald Trump’s legacy is going to be with us for the next 30 to 40 years because of the people that he’s placed on the bench. Even if we win back the White House and win back the senate, there is a third branch of government that has been taken over by one party. And even if we seek to pass things like a public option on healthcare, or dramatic election reform proposal, or a climate change solution, there’s going to be bad faith challenges to those types of reforms. <i>REPORTER: What do you look for in a judge?</i> - Folks who have demonstrated some sort of courage, some sort of ability <i>to stand strong in the face of adversity.</i> <i>People who you know, when then they get on the bench,</i> <i>they will not change and turn into someone else.</i> <i>[applause]</i> <i>MAGGIE: It became sort of an endurance test for him.</i> And I think it’s like when you’re on level—you know, mile 15 of the marathon. You’re sort of in it. - Trump wore on him, bothered him, and belittled him. <i>But McGahn thought, “If I can hang on, I may even</i> <i>get to put another judge on the Supreme Court.</i> So how much pain can I take?” <i>TRUMP: The problem with the Mueller investigation</i> <i>is everybody’s got massive conflicts.</i> <i>I call them the angry Democrats.</i> <i>These are angry, angry people.</i> <i>There was no collusion. It’s a whole hoax.</i> <i>There was no collusion. There was no obstruction.</i> <i>[reporters clamoring]</i> - If you were under investigation for obstruction of justice, you’d probably be on your best behavior. <i>But what Trump did was the complete opposite.</i> <i>He wrote Tweets about it.</i> <i>He went out in public and he ran his mouth about it.</i> - One of the things that Donald Trump does with everything in his life, and with every relationship in his life, is he tries to stretch the bounds of what’s acceptable. <i>In Don McGahn’s mind, there were very clear lines</i> <i>that a White House Counsel could not go past,</i> <i>and he was not going to.</i> <i>MICHAEL: Trump’s badgering McGahn throughout June.</i> <i>And coming into Father’s Day weekend,</i> <i>he tells the people around the president,</i> <i>“I need a breather here.</i> Just kind of let me be this weekend.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>That Saturday morning, when he wakes up,</i> <i>McGahn has these messages that Trump is looking for him.</i> <i>He calls Trump, and Trump says,</i> “Mueller’s got these conflicts, and it’s gotta go. Basically, you gotta fire Mueller.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MAGGIE: McGahn wouldn’t do it.</i> <i>Trump didn’t let go of it, and was very focused on it.</i> <i>MICHAEL: McGahn decides in his head, he’s like,</i> <i>“I’m not going to carry this out.</i> <i>That could be obstruction of justice.</i> <i>I’m resigning.”</i> <i>MAGGIE: He drives to the White House,</i> <i>his office in the West Wing.</i> <i>He packs it all up.</i> <i>MICHAEL: He signs his resignation letter,</i> <i>and he walks around the West Wing,</i> <i>looking for someone to give it to.</i> But the president’s not there. <i>He calls Bannon, and is like, “I’m out.</i> <i>I’m done.”</i> <i>MAGGIE: One of the ironies here is that Steve Bannon</i> <i>is seen as kind of this wild man,</i> but he actually was this voice of sort of pragmatism when it came to survival within the Trump West Wing. And he gets McGahn to calm down, and just sort of stay the course. - Bannon says, “Hey man, chill out. We’ll get the president to lay off you. Just do your judges thing, put your head down, go back to work.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>BANNON: With McGahn, it was always one thing.</i> You’re gonna do things here, that all your life, that you thought about and strived for. And you actually have the chance to change the direction of the country. <i>You’re doing something here that’s historic.</i> <i>MICHAEL: McGahn shows back up at work on Monday morning,</i> and Trump stops badgering him about firing Mueller. <i>MAGGIE: But the facts of this 24-hour period</i> <i>are still hotly contested by Trump and his lawyer.</i> <i>RUDY GIULIANI: Come on into my office. MAGGIE: Great.</i> Mr. Mayor, good to see you. How are you? MICHAEL: How you doing? RUDY: Okay. So this is a podcast? What’d you call it? MAGGIE: No, it’s television. MICHAEL: We have a weekly television show now. So we’re doing a, you know... MAGGIE: McGahn story. - McGahn story. - McGahn? - Yeah. - Oh, good. Mr. McGahn. I was surprised the president selected him, because I thought the president would select someone closer to him. - You think Trump needed someone that understood him better. - The kind of person he’d instinctively talk to. - Lean on? - Which could either be an old friend, or somebody you just hit it off with. - When you look at the Mueller investigation, do you think McGahn told the truth? - I was there at the time, for many of those conversations. I never remember him saying, “Fire Mueller.” And if he had said, “Fire Mueller,” I think I’d have jumped up—jumped up—up at it. There’s a great play, “Murder in the Cathedral.” And Henry II says to his henchman, “Can someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?” And then they go kill Thomas Becket. And then they come back to him, and he says, “I didn’t want you to kill him. I just wanted you to get rid of him.” So there might be something like that here. - How do people differentiate between when he really wants you to do something, or when he’s just venting because he’s frustrated? - You gotta be willing to go back to the principal, and say to him, “Did you mean this? Is this what you wanted?” Because things are going to happen very fast. A lot of pressures. And sometimes it’s your job to slow it down, give your client a chance to think about it. I think Don overdramatized the whole situation. You said it was gonna be another Watergate. Is it going to be like the Saturday Night Massacre? Mueller? The Saturday Night Massacre? Think maybe you were being a drama queen? And could that possibly have affected your judgment about you misinterpreting what the president said? He comes off bad. <i>MAGGIE: Then something incredibly unusual happens.</i> <i>Trump, on the advice of lawyers Ty Cobb and John Dowd,</i> <i>tells McGahn to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation.</i> <i>To go in and give a full testimony.</i> - And McGahn’s like, “This doesn’t make any sense. This may not be too pretty for the president when they find out all these things.” - I think they believed Donald Trump telling them. “There’s nothing here. Nothing happened.” <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>CHRIS CHRISTIE: My understanding of what he was instructed to do</i> was to go in there and basically, you know, I guess it’s the old phrase, open the kimono. No restrictions. They can ask him whatever they wanted verbally. And they could demand anything in terms of written material. - What was your reaction as a— - Well, when I heard— - As a prosecutor and a lawyer? - Enormous mistake. It’s ridiculous. The president was being enormously ill-served by what I called a sea-level legal team. I think that it put McGahn in an awful position. But he had no choice, you know? The president of the United States accepted that advice, and Don had to comply. It was like having a peephole into the Oval Office. - In real time, right? - Yeah. - That decision to let McGahn go cooperate to the extent that he did is why you have a 200-page section on obstruction in the Mueller report. <i>[intense music]</i> <i>He is the most important person who Mueller spoke to.</i> <i>MICHAEL: What McGahn essentially did for them</i> <i>was provide them with a road map to</i> the episodes and incidents that raised questions about whether the president obstructed justice. - He was able to tell Mueller who to look to, who was vital. <i>Who was the president talking to?</i> Who was he getting counsel from? <i>Trump came to see it as an epic betrayal.</i> <i>But the irony is that it also revealed the extent</i> <i>to which McGahn had protected the president</i> <i>from his own behavior.</i> <i>Had essentially saved him from himself.</i> - There are instance after instance in the report, <i>where if McGahn had done what Trump wanted,</i> then there would have been clear-cut obstruction. <i>MAGGIE: Eleven days after we broke the story</i> <i>on the magnitude of McGahn’s testimony,</i> <i>Trump announced that his White House Counsel</i> <i>would be stepping down.</i> <i>As usual, the news came via Twitter.</i> <i>But before he left, McGahn had one final job to do.</i> <i>MAN: Do you affirm that the testimony you’re about</i> <i>to give before the committee will be the truth,</i> <i>the whole truth,</i> <i>and nothing but the truth, so help you God?</i> <i>BRETT KAVANAUGH: I do.</i> <i>MAGGIE: There was a second seat</i> <i>to fill on the Supreme Court, and things weren’t going well.</i> - I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. <i>MAGGIE: Brett Kavanaugh is McGahn’s close friend.</i> <i>There is a personal tie there that influenced McGahn</i> in terms of trying to get him through. - McGahn and Kavanaugh are in a small room in the Senate Office Building. <i>Christine Blasey Ford,</i> <i>Kavanagh’s accuser, had just testified.</i> <i>REPORTER: It was gut-wrenching to listen to her.</i> <i>And that puts Brett Kavanaugh in jeopardy.</i> <i>MICHAEL: McGahn turns to Kavanaugh and says,</i> <i>“Look, you only have one choice.</i> <i>You have to show as much of your emotion as possible.</i> You have to channel the outrage that you have about <i>these accusations.”</i> <i>And he coaches Kavanaugh</i> <i>into taking the most aggressive stance possible.</i> And when Kavanaugh comes out, he comes out swinging. - This has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit. This is a circus. Grotesque and coordinated character assassination. <i>MAGGIE: It was a risky strategy.</i> <i>But it worked.</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>TRUMP: I stand before you today on the heels</i> <i>of a tremendous victory for our nation,</i> <i>our people, and our beloved Constitution.</i> <i>[cheers and applause]</i> <i>MICHAEL: McGahn is gone just days later.</i> <i>This is his last accomplishment.</i> He gets it done, and then is out the door. <i>[dramatic music]</i> <i>♪ ♪</i> <i>MICHAEL: In Donald Trump’s first year in office,</i> he appointed more judges to the circuit courts than any president before him. <i>MAGGIE: You’re going to see the impact</i> <i>of McGahn’s fingerprint on the court system</i> <i>for decades to come.</i> <i>These are lifetime appointments.</i> <i>McGahn is one of the only people</i> <i>who has emerged from Donald Trump’s orbit,</i> not just intact, but honestly better off in a lot of ways. - McGahn knew he was playing in a dangerous area with Trump. <i>And for now, to sit there as a private lawyer,</i> <i>who is gonna make millions of dollars a year</i> <i>and faces no prison time,</i> I think he feels pretty good about that. <i>MAGGIE: The role that McGahn played both</i> <i>in the Mueller investigation</i> <i>and in this broad appointment of judges across the country,</i> <i>that’s going to be one of the most durable factors</i> <i>of this White House, of a White House</i> <i>where nothing lasts, those are two things</i> <i>that are going to stand out</i> for a very long time. <i>♪ ♪</i>