With every passing day, it seems, the public is learning more about who Donald Trump’s Justice Department secretly targeted—from news outlets to Democratic lawmakers to his own White House. The New York Times revealed Sunday that the DOJ in 2018 compelled Apple to provide data on then-White House counsel Donald McGahn. The company last month reportedly notified McGahn, as well as his wife, that it had complied with a subpoena for their information three years ago but was bound by a gag order from discussing it for years prior; according to the Times, DOJ policy allows gag orders for subpoenas to be “renewed for up to a year at a time, suggesting that prosecutors went to court several times to prevent Apple from notifying the McGahns earlier.”
The disclosure, pronounced “extraordinary” by both the Times and CNN, raises a series of unanswered questions about the nature of the pursuit—including what federal agents were looking for, how central a role McGahn played in their investigation, or what data on McGahn was provided to the government (Apple reportedly declined to tell the former White House counsel what they had handed over). It was also not immediately clear for what period the Justice Department sought McGahn’s communications. As the top lawyer representing the presidency—and, before that, the 2016 Trump campaign—McGahn was potentially in contact with people of interest in the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, or subsequent leak hunts. Notably, the subpoena was issued by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, which played a central role in Mueller’s investigation, and it came at a time when Trump had reportedly grown angry with McGahn for refusing his order to fire Mueller. According to CNN, the subpoena for McGahn’s data did not come from Mueller’s team.
The secret seizure of McGahn’s records is the latest in a string of revelations about steps the Trump Justice Department took to covertly obtain communications data of reporters and House Democrats as part of leak investigations—efforts that in some cases continued briefly under President Joe Biden. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, is set to meet with newsroom leaders from the Washington Post, the Times, and CNN on Monday in the wake of the Trump-era disclosures, and to hold the Biden administration accountable when it comes to leak investigations involving the news media going forward. “What we’re asking the attorney general tomorrow is to try to bind future administrations,” CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist said ahead of the meeting on Sunday. “Don’t just send a memo. Change policy.” (News leaders previously met in 2013 with then-Attorney General Eric Holder after Barack Obama’s DOJ aggressively targeted journalists in leak investigations.)
In the case of the lawmakers, the Justice Department had also imposed a gag order on Apple to keep the company from discussing the subpoenas with them. The news has prompted backlash among Democrats in Washington, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on ex-Trump Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions, as well as former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, to testify before Congress about the subpoenas. While Sessions was AG at the time of the Apple subpoena, CNN notes that he was recused from all matters tied to the Russia investigation, which means a related leak probe would have fallen under Rosenstein. Calling on anyone involved in the “gross abuse of power” to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned, “If they refuse—they are subject to being subpoenaed and compelled to testify.”
However, Rosenstein claimed on Saturday that he knew nothing of a subpoena targeting Democratic members of Congress, attempting to distance himself just as Barr, too, did in an interview with Politico a day earlier. “To say that they didn’t know anything about it is beyond belief,” Pelosi said about Barr and Sessions on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
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June 15, 2021 at 12:41AM
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Trump DOJ’s Secret Targets Are Now Being Revealed - Vanity Fair
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