President Trump said Thursday that pressure from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation had nothing to do with his decision to announce the departure of White House counsel Don McGahn, the latest example of how a president who prizes loyalty is having longtime allegiances questioned, tested and sometimes dissolved in criminal probes.
A day after Mr. Trump surprised even Mr. McGahn by declaring that the top White House lawyer will leave this fall, the president rebutted media reports that his decision was connected to recent reports about the White House counsel spending 30 hours answering questions from Mr. Mueller’s investigators.
“The Rigged Russia Witch Hunt did not come into play, even a little bit, with respect to my decision on Don McGahn!” Mr. Trump tweeted.
The president also referred in the past tense to Mr. McGahn, who is still on the job, while denying that there was friction between the two over debating whether to fire Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. McGahn is the kind of adviser whom the president values above all others — one who has been loyal to him since the early days of his presidential campaign. Another person who fit into that category was Mr. Sessions, before he earned the president’s eternal wrath by recusing himself in the Russia probe and paving the way for Mr. Mueller’s probe.
Some Republican senators allied with the White House say they expect Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Sessions soon, probably after the midterm elections.
The president told Bloomberg News on Thursday that Mr. Sessions’ job is safe until the elections, but he would not say if he would keep his job after November.
“I would just love to have him do a great job,” Mr. Trump said.
Last week, Mr. Trump said he tapped Mr. Sessions for the job because he expected loyalty.
“He took the job and then he said, ’I’m going to recuse myself’ — I said what kind of a man is this?” the president told Fox News. “By the way, he was on the campaign. The only reason I gave him the job, I felt loyalty.”
Carrie Cordero, an analyst at the Center for New American Security and a former Justice Department official, said it would be “difficult to come up with two officials more loyal to the president’s domestic policy agenda” than Mr. Sessions and Mr. McGahn.
If both are gone soon, she tweeted, it only underscores that Mr. Trump’s top priority is “his own personal interests.”
Trump friend Christopher Ruddy disagrees with that assessment.
“He values loyalty very highly,” Mr. Ruddy said. “But I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence people are massively becoming disloyal.”
In recent months, however, several Trump loyalists have either turned on the president or taken actions in investigations that could become harmful to Mr. Trump’s interests.
Michael Cohen, his longtime personal attorney, pleaded guilty this month to eight felonies, including two federal campaign violations that he said were at the direction of Mr. Trump — hush-money payments to two women who say they’d had affairs with the future president. Cohen’s lawyer has said the former Trump loyalist wants to talk with Mr. Mueller; his plea deal does not mention any possible cooperation with the Russia investigation.
Federal prosecutors in New York have granted immunity from prosecution to Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, in return for information in their case against Cohen. Legal observers say Mr. Weisselberg could provide a road map to investigators into the Trump Organization’s financial dealings.
Federal prosecutors also have granted immunity to David Pecker, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump who is publisher of the National Enquirer. Mr. Pecker reportedly has provided investigators with details of hush-money payments by the supermarket tabloid to protect Mr. Trump from bad publicity.
On a different front, former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman has turned on the president with a tell-all book published this month. She has accused him of racism, and has aired recordings of private phone calls with Mr. Trump and others in Trump world.
Mr. Ruddy called the suggestion that Mr. Trump’s allies are turning on him en masse “media spin.”
“If you look at facts, there isn’t really much of that going on,” Mr. Ruddy said. He noted that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, convicted this month of tax evasion, “has not turned against him.”
The Pecker and Weisselberg cases, Mr. Ruddy said, “are limited immunity” situations.
“The government is basically saying to them, ’we want information on this case, we’re not seeking to prosecute you, just provide us with all the information you can,’” he said. “And they’re saying ’fine.’ That’s pretty typical in these type of investigations. It doesn’t indicate that they’re turning against the president in any way, or that he he’s indicating in any way that he doesn’t want them to cooperate with the authorities in the investigation.”
As for Cohen, Mr. Ruddy said, “so far he hasn’t signed any cooperation deals.”
“He obviously has been critical of the president,” he said. “As a campaign contribution, it’s a really gray area, it’s a really big stretch. I don’t think it’s a criminal violation. And the other parts of the Cohen charges have nothing to do with the president.”
Some people have compared Cohen to John Dean, the White House lawyer who turned on President Richard Nixon during Watergate and gave prosecutors an insider’s knowledge of lawbreaking. Mr. Ruddy said the comparison is unfair and inaccurate.
“President Nixon had a lot of people turn against him in Watergate,” he said. “I don’t think you’re seeing that. [Mr. Trump] has demonstrated a lot of support among his government, in Congress. People who are critical of the president are the ’never-Trumpers.’ They were that way in the beginning before he ever took office, and they continue to be.”
• Gabriella Muñoz contributed to this article.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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