GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that it doesn’t matter if President Trump wanted White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller because it doesn’t amount to obstruction of justice.
“I don’t care what they talked about. He didn’t do anything. The point is the president did not impede Mueller from doing his investigation,” Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Trump ally, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“It’s just all theater. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what he said to Don McGahn. It’s what he did. And the president never obstructed,” the South Carolina lawmaker said.
He also said he wouldn’t call on McGahn or Mueller to testify before his panel.
“No. I’m done,” he said.
A redacted version of the report released earlier this month by Attorney General William Barr said Trump called McGahn in June 2017 and told him to direct deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was overseeing Mueller, to fire the special counsel.
McGahn, who testified under oath to FBI investigators, refused and threatened to quit, even going so far as packing up his White House office.
But former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said if Trump wasn’t president he would likely have been indicted on obstruction charges.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years and I can tell you I’ve personally prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this,” Yates, who was fired by Trump in January 2017, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I believe if he were not the president of the United States he would likely be indicted on obstruction,” she said.
Trump has denied pressuring McGahn to fire Mueller, writing in a tweet last week that if he wanted the special counsel gone “I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself.”