The House Judiciary Committee is planning to subpoena former White House staff secretary Rob Porter (reminder: the one forced to resign for having abused his two ex-wives) in its investigation into Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice, an investigation that is a de facto impeachment inquiry. The White House will continue fighting all subpoenas of Trump aides, a fight it has extended even to former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who never worked in the White House and therefore shouldn’t be covered by any executive privilege claim.
Porter’s notes from his time in the White House were repeatedly cited in the Mueller report’s obstruction of justice section, and suggest that he was not a Lewandowski-style Trump loyalist. Sample: Porter did not, as Trump asked him to, reach out to Justice Department official Rachel Brand about taking over supervision of the Mueller investigation “because he was sensitive to the implications of that action and did not want to be involved in a chain of events associated with an effort to end the investigation or fire the special counsel,” as the report characterized it. In other words, Porter, as a Republican working in the White House, thought Trump was trying to obstruct justice and didn’t want any part of it. Porter also witnessed Trump’s efforts to get then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller.
Team Trump will continue trying to run out the clock through stonewalling and court challenges, because it apparently has so much to hide that any questions to anyone connected with Trump in the last four years is deeply threatening.