After graduation from law school, McGahn worked in campaign finance law at the Washington, D.C., office of law firm
Patton Boggs. From 1999 to 2008, McGahn was chief counsel for the
National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). According to documentary footage in the 2018 film
Dark Money, McGahn's brief period as incoming chair of the Commission ushered in a newly partisan rigor to the FEC whereby he and his two fellow Republican members, also new, formed an unprecedented lockstep voting bloc preventing any and all enforcement of FEC regulations. McGahn resigned from the FEC in September 2013. After leaving the FEC, McGahn returned to the law firm Patton Boggs. McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him to the
White House, and six more were appointed to senior posts in the Trump Administration.
Donald Trump 2016 Presidential campaign McGahn served as
Donald Trump's campaign counsel during his
2016 campaign for president. McGahn managed all litigation involving Donald Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign. Early in 2016, he stopped efforts to keep Trump off of the Republican primary ballot in New Hampshire by going to court and winning to ensure ballot access in a key primary state. Several weeks before the election, lawsuits were filed in four battleground states alleging voter intimidation and seeking to enjoin the Trump campaign from having observers at polling locations. McGahn successfully managed and won these litigations.
Trump presidency Shortly after Trump was elected, he named McGahn General Counsel of the
Presidential Transition Team. On November 25, 2016, McGahn was named
White House Counsel for the President-elect's new
administration. Since Jones Day has also represented the Trump campaign in its dealings with Robert Mueller, McGahn secured an ethics waiver that allows him to talk to his old firm when its clients have business before the U.S. government. Gorsuch was sworn in on Monday April 10, 2017. McGahn also recommended the nomination of Labor Secretary
Alexander Acosta. Acosta was sworn in on April 28, 2017. McGahn assembled a team of lawyers to oversee filling all judicial vacancies. Guided by McGahn's team, President Trump had already appointed ten appellate judges by November 11, 2017, the most that early in a presidency since
Richard Nixon. According to
The New York Times, McGahn conveyed instructions from President Trump to
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, requesting Sessions not to
recuse himself from overseeing investigations into
Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. McGahn was unaware that Sessions had already consulted with career attorneys at the Department of Justice. When Sessions informed him he had already decided to recuse himself, McGahn ceased further discussion of the topic. In response to this,
Walter Shaub, former director of the
United States Office of Government Ethics, said McGahn had "done much to undermine anticorruption mechanisms in this country." Shaub said, "It is a crime for a federal employee to participate in a particular matter in which he has a financial interest." In January 2018,
The New York Times reported that in June 2017, the president asked McGahn to instruct top Justice Department officials to dismiss special counsel
Robert Mueller, and that McGahn refused, instead threatening to resign.
The Times reported on August 18, 2018, that McGahn had been cooperating extensively with the
Special Counsel investigation for several months and that he and his lawyer had become concerned that Trump "had decided to let Mr. McGahn take the fall for decisions that could be construed as obstruction of justice, like the Comey firing, by telling the special counsel that he was only following shoddy legal advice from Mr. McGahn." On August 29, 2018, President Trump announced "McGahn will be leaving his position in the fall, shortly after the confirmation (hopefully) of Judge
Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. I have worked with Don for a long time and truly appreciate his service!" McGahn formally departed the Trump administration on October 17, 2018. In November 2018 it was reported that in spring 2018, Trump told McGahn that he wanted the Justice Department to prosecute
Hillary Clinton and
James Comey. McGahn told Trump that he had no authority to order a prosecution and that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo to Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face possible impeachment. McGahn returned to
Jones Day in March 2019 as the head of the firm's Government Regulation Practice. According to
Mueller's final report, McGahn complained to White House chief of staff
Reince Priebus that Trump was trying to get him to "do crazy shit." The president responded that McGahn was a "lying bastard." On May 7, 2019, the White House instructed McGahn not to comply with a
subpoena issued by the
House Judiciary Committee, instructing the committee to redirect its records requests related to Mueller's investigation to the White House; McGahn is the most cited witness in the Mueller Report. House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi referenced the action as an
obstruction of justice, stating during an event at
Cornell University, "Trump is goading us to impeach him[.]" A week later, it was reported that Trump's lawyers believed that McGahn told Mueller he did not believe Trump obstructed the investigation and ordered him not to provide any documents he had to the Judiciary Committee. On May 21, 2019, McGahn defied a subpoena to testify before the
House Judiciary Committee, at the direction of his former client. On August 7, the House filed a lawsuit with the
United States District Court for the District of Columbia in an effort to challenge this precedent-setting move. ==Congressional subpoena==