White House counsel Don McGahn is reportedly planning to leave his position this fall.
Axios reported on Wednesday that top officials in the White House said they believe McGahn will exit his post either after Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court or following the midterm elections.
{mosads}President Trump has not chosen someone who will fill McGahn’s role, according to the news outlet, which added that McGahn has told a confidant that he wants his successor to be Emmett Flood. Flood, who served in former President Bill Clinton’s administration, joined the Trump administration in May to help it deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference.
“The reason he can represent both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump is because he thinks these investigators come and basically put a target on their backs, trying to overturn every aspect of their lives searching for a crime,” a source told Axios.
The report regarding McGahn’s impending exit comes only weeks after The New York Times reported that the White House counsel had cooperated with Mueller as part of his investigation.
Among other topics, McGahn has reportedly discussed Trump’s dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey and his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of the special counsel, despite Sessions’s recusal from the Russia probe.
The president, who has consistently railed against Mueller’s probe as a partisan “witch hunt,” responded to the report by tweeting that he allowed McGahn “and all other requested members of the White House Staff, to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel.”
But it was later reported by CNN that Trump grew angry after learning that McGahn spent a total of 30 hours sharing details with Mueller’s team.