Of all the Republican statements about Donald Trump Jr. being subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has to be the best.
Apparently the Republican chair of the Senate Intel Committee didn’t get the memo from the Majority Leader that this case was closed.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be with Republicans. Mitch McConnell makes a statement, and everyone falls in line. Just hours before Republican Richard Burr issued a subpoena for Trump Jr., Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee worked overtime to get the “case closed” phrase into every speech. As Burr must have known would happen, pro-Trump groups are angling for his scalp. And as The Washington Post reports, they are offended. Deeply offended. Said acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, “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.”
Yes. When subpoenaing Donald Trump Jr., always remember to raise your pinky finger.
So why did Burr issue the subpoena? On the surface, there are any number of good reasons to drag Trump Jr. back for another round of discussions. There’s the strong suspicion that he lied to the committee about the Trump Tower meeting, in terms of both the contents of the meeting and who knew about it. There’s the near-dead-certainty that Trump Jr. lied to the committee about his knowledge of and involvement in the Moscow Project. And there’s the Mueller report, which shows how hard Trump Jr. fought even talking to the special counsel (and in fact, he never did). But the driving force behind Burr issuing a subpoena for Trump Jr. seems to match the reason that the House Judiciary Committee was yesterday voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt: pure frustration over the level of obstruction and obfuscation being raised.
Negotiations for Trump Jr.’s return to the Senate Intelligence Committee began months ago, well before the release of the Mueller report. The trigger for those negotiations appears to have been Michael Cohen’s testimony that Trump Jr. was an integral part of the Moscow Project, meaning that Trump Jr.’s closed-door testimony to the Intelligence Committee was somewhere in the area between perjury … and perjury.
But that wasn’t what earned him a subpoena. That came because Donald Trump Jr. was apparently taking a cue from his father and utterly refusing to cooperate, even though he had signed an agreement to do so months ago. After weeks of negotiation, CNN reported, Burr found himself at a standoff with Trump Jr.
Apparently, negotiations were continuing until the Mueller report appeared, at which point Trump Jr. shut down, and began contemplating either pleading protection under the Fifth Amendment or simply refusing to appear. It was only when it became clear that Trump Jr. was going to neither appear nor make a clear statement about why he would not appear that Burr decided to go ahead and draft a subpoena.
During the Russia investigation, Richard Burr was actually feeding information to the White House—information that might have helped potential witnesses determine what information to destroy or whether to testify. Burr’s information may have even helped in Donald Trump Jr.’s decision not to meet with the special counsel.
But despite Burr’s help to the Trump campaign during the investigation, even he could apparently not take the level of obstruction and disdain being directed at Congress. Unlike his fellow Republicans, who are taking this as another opportunity to grovel before Donald Trump.