THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2019 17
COMMENT
ALTER-EGOTRIPS
D
onald Trump, at times when it has
served his purposes, has chosen to
assume different personae. There was
John Barron, an alias he used in the nine-
teen-eighties when giving false property
valuations to a reporter. Later, there was
John Miller, a guise he adopted to brag
to People about his romances. (“He’s liv-
ing with Marla and he’s got three other
girlfriends.”) David Dennison was his
stand-in for a hush agreement with the
adult-movie actress Stormy Daniels,
which has now led the Manhattan Dis-
trict Attorney to subpoena Trump’s ac-
countant in an effort to get access, at
last, to the President’s tax returns.
More recently, Trump has shown an
elastic sense of identity in ways that ex-
emplify his Presidential overreach and
arrogance. On Halloween, in a case that
has major implications for both the im-
peachment process and the future of ex-
ecutive power, a Justice Department
lawyer told Judge Ketanji Brown Jack-
son, in a district court in D.C., that Don
McGahn, the former White House
counsel, was “absolutely immune” from
congressional subpoenas because he is
“the alter ego of the President.” Appar-
ently, he’s not the only one. The office
of the current White House counsel,
Pat Cipollone, has told potential wit-
nesses in the House impeachment in-
vestigation—from Mick Mulvaney, the
acting White House chief of staff, to
Charles Kupperman, the former dep-
uty national-security adviser—that they,
too, are absolutely immune.
The argument is that certain asso-
ciates work so closely with the Presi-
dent that they are, in effect, an extension
of him, and thus free to ignore subpoe-
nas or requests to testify. Others were
told that, if they testified, they risked
violating additional forms of Presiden-
tial privilege. Some witnesses, includ-
ing Marie Yovanovitch, the former Am-
bassador to Ukraine, and Fiona Hill, a
former National Security Council offi-
cial, showed up anyway, and their tes-
timony is proving devastating for Trump.
More than a dozen witnesses, though,
have failed to appear.
A prominent absentee was John
Bolton, the former national-security ad-
viser. On Friday, his lawyer said that
Bolton’s willingness to testify depends
on what the courts have to say about im-
munity. Bolton had a difficult relation-
ship with Trump, who fired him, and a
close view of his foreign dealings. (Ac-
cording to Hill, Bolton called the Ukraine
scheme a “drug deal.”) His lawyer added
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDA
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
that Bolton had new information, all of
which could make him a dangerous wit-
ness for the President, particularly after
this week, when public hearings begin.
But, even beyond the question of who
will testify, the fights over immunity,
along with a host of related legal battles,
are critical, because Trump’s Presidency
has been defined by his belief that he
cannot be held to account. That convic-
tion is particularly pernicious given that
many of the questions at issue—What
is executive privilege? Can a sitting Pres-
ident be indicted?—are surprisingly ill-
defined in American jurisprudence. In
fact, Presidents from both parties have
on occasion tried to claim that close aides
had absolute immunity. When President
George W. Bush tested the assertion, in
a case involving the former White House
counsel Harriet Miers and the firing of
U.S. attorneys, a federal judge ruled that
no such immunity existed. But that case
was settled, and never made it to even
the appeals-court level. This may be the
moment to establish some clarity.
The McGahn case is further along
than other suits attempting to do so.
(Last week, the House Intelligence Com-
mittee withdrew its subpoena for testi-
mony from Kupperman, who had
brought his own case, to keep the focus
on McGahn.) The case arose from the
Mueller report, which suggested that
McGahn may have direct knowledge of
Trump’s alleged obstructions of justice.
By most accounts, Judge Jackson was
taken aback by the breadth of the Ad-
ministration’s claims, which included a
denial that courts should be allowed to
have any say in a fight between the Pres-
ident and Congress. “How will they
