Thursday, the White House released a 5 page response to the Special Counsel Office Report (SCO Report) on possible collusion with the Russians by the 2016 Presidential campaign and transition team of Donald J. Trump.

“The SCO Report suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law,” Emmet Flood, White House Counsel, said.

Full Report

“Because they do not belong to our criminal justice vocabulary, the SCO’s inverted-proof-standard and ‘exoneration’ statements can be understood only as political statements, issuing from persons (federal prosecutors) who in our system of government are rightly expected never to be political in the performance of their duties,” Flood said.

ANALYSIS

ONE SIDE:

Focused on legal issues.

This letter from White House special counsel Emmet Flood to Attorney General William Barr is a devastating indictment of the Mueller Report:https://t.co/9OfqBLi90K — CatholicVote.org (@CatholicVote) May 2, 2019

THE OTHER SIDE:

Focused on further personal attacks and gaslighting.

Emmet Flood has sold his soul. Just like so many others in Trump’s orbit. — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) May 2, 2019

On Friday, Rush Limbaugh said about the Flood letter, “The Mueller report is not even legal. If you can’t make the case then you drop it, you don’t keep searching for a crime. Flood says it is illegal- it violates the law and ethics.

Innocence is presumed, that is the starting point. The accused does not have to exonerate himself. The accused is innocent from the get-go. The 400 plus pages is used to discredit Trump and Trump supporters. It is defamatory. You can’t use it to produce a charge. The Democrats real target is Don McGahn because they are focused on the statement about the firing Mueller. The Mueller report is done and over,” he said.

White House target, according to the letter from Flood, “Comey for using the power he didn’t have in the Clinton email investigation,” Limbaugh said.

Democrat target Former White House Counsel, Don McGahn.

Senate will not call on him. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee said: “It is over.”

.@LindseyGrahamSC says he won’t call Don McGahn to testify before Senate Judiciary. “It's over for me. He [Pres. Trump] didn't collude with the Russians. Obstruction of justice in this situation is absurd.” pic.twitter.com/VjfHpoRl81 — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) April 28, 2019

The House is in a panic to force McGahn to testify.

The Mueller report gave the Democrats a target to put on McGahn, whose testimony to the special counsel featured prominently in the report’s discussion of obstruction of justice.

Nadler issues subpoena to former White House Counsel Donald McGahn. Wants info about what McGahn told Mueller investigation — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) April 22, 2019

President Trump says former White House counsel Don McGahn should not testify before Congress https://t.co/RlqE70tT4d pic.twitter.com/aAyd11WXv4 — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 3, 2019

Now on record from the White House in the Flood letter, this report is a travesty. And a force multiplier is a fresh interview on Fox News, where Trump hints he will use his executive privilege to deny the House.

“I don’t think I can let him testify,” Trump said about McGahn.

WATCH:

Flood smashes the report as “part law school exam paper”.

Flood blasted the document for laying “raw evidentiary material combined with its own inclusive observations on the arguable legal significance of the gathered content.”

“This species of public report has no basis in the relevant regulation and no precedent in the history of special/independent counsel investigations,” Flood wrote.

NADLER’S RESPONSE TO FLOOD’S LETTER- A NEW OFFER

Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-NY), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, believes he is entitled to material from Grand Juries.

In the new offer, Nadler says he's willing to "prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production." But he isn't budging on obtaining grand jury material, which Barr has argued he's not allowed to provide by law — Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) May 3, 2019

The Mueller report is finally the target of a bold dissection by Trump and his legal team.

In other words, the gloves are off.