Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that it was "bad form" for Republican leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee to subpoena President Donald Trump's eldest son without giving the West Wing a heads up.
Mulvaney told CBS’ Major Garrett in an interview for Garrett's podcast that he’d been blindsided by the news, and only found out about the GOP-led committee’s move to compel Donald Trump Jr.
to testify prior to leaving for the interview.He downplayed the potential implications of the subpoena, noting that Trump Jr. doesn’t work in the West Wing, but took a swipe at lawmakers for the lack of warning, accusing them of being on the brink of politicizing the panel.
“I have no opinion about that because he is a private citizen and not a member of the administration,” Mulvaney said. “That being said, the fact that the President's son got a subpoena from a Republican-led committee — and listen, I'm all for bipartisanship on intel committees. I think it's one of Adam Schiff's great failings, is to — is to sort of politicize the Intel Committee in the House. So I have no difficulty with bipartisanship, but to subpoena the president of the United States's son and not at least get a heads-up, I thought was — let's say bad form.”
News of the order for Trump Jr. to appear broke Wednesday afternoon, and Mulvaney said he wasn’t sure if Trump himself found out about the subpoena before his departure for a rally in Florida. It was possible someone in the White House had advance notice about the subpoena, Mulvaney suggested, reiterating that the subpoena of someone outside the administration wasn’t under his immediate purview.
"But it would be highly unlikely that it would end up in the White House and I wouldn't know about it," he added."I'm not involved in the president's — his legal matters regarding his business, his legal matters regarding his family, I don't do that. I handle the West Wing of the government," he continued.
It’s unclear exactly why the committee subpoenaed Trump Jr., and Mulvaney claimed Wednesday to also be in the dark. Trump Jr. testified voluntarily before the panel previously as part of its investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and came under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller over his involvement with a Trump Tower Moscow project and a meeting in Trump Tower in 2016 with a Russian lawyer who had promised damaging information on the president's 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, sourced from the Kremlin.
There had been some speculation Trump Jr. would be indicted in Mueller's probe, but the special counsel ultimately did not charge the president's son.
Mulvaney said Wednesday he has “no idea what the factual allegations are” regarding the subpoena but added “I know it deals with a Trump Tower discussion or something like that." He cautioned that his knowledge had been informed only by news reports.
A source familiar with the matter told POLITICO Wednesday that Trump Jr. is weighing not appearing before the committee, potentially setting up an intraparty clash. The subpoena came just days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the chamber floor to declare the Russia issue “case closed,” and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) bashed the order on Twitter.
But Mulvaney asserted that the subpoena didn’t conflict with McConnell’s declaration.
“They're two different people. They do share the same name and certainly Don Jr. is the president's son,” the acting chief of staff argued, insisting that the question of the president's personal involvement in any Russian collusion or obstruction of justice had been settled even as his son faced a subpoena.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine