President Donald Trump scored an incremental court victory Wednesday, as a judge approved a request from Justice Department lawyers to let former White House counsel Don McGahn avoid testifying in the House impeachment inquiry for now.
Federal Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson, who ruled Monday that Trump can't block McGahn from testifying because he's not a "king," put a so-called "administrative stay" on her own decision that keeps it on ice for seven days while she considers the administration's request for a more extensive stay pending an appeal in a higher court.
She noted that the brief pause "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits" of the Justice Department's request for a stay and noted the Democratically-controlled House Judiciary Committee consented to the weeklong freeze.
Earlier Wednesday, the Justice Department filed a similar motion in the U.S. Appeals Court in Washington asking for a stay on Brown Jackson's order spanning the duration of the appeal process.
In the 29-page motion, the Justice Department cited a 2008 decision from the court allowing a stay pending an appeal of a lower-court ruling finding that President George W. Bush couldn't legally block his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, from complying with a House subpoena for testimony.
"This Court not only granted a stay pending appeal but took the unusual step of publishing a precedential opinion granting the stay, explaining that the dispute was 'of potentially great significance for the balance of power between the Legislative and Executive Branches,'" the motion stated.
Congress and the Bush White House resolved the Miers testimony before an appeal court decision was made.
In her Monday ruling, Brown Jackson said Trump's attempt to block McGahn from testifying by claiming "absolute immunity" wasn't constitutionally sound since "a subpoena is a legal construct ... and per the Constitution, no one is above the law."
"Presidents are not kings," she wrote.
The judiciary panel subpoenaed McGahn in April, demanding that he tell lawmakers what he knows about Trump's obstruction of the Russia investigation, as laid out by former special counsel Robert Mueller.
McGahn refused, citing Trump's "absolute immunity" orders, prompting the lawsuit that resulted in Brown Jackson's decision.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler says he hopes McGahn will ultimately come before his committee to testify. McGahn has said he will abide by court decisions.
Since the McGahn subpoena, the impeachment inquiry has shifted from focusing on the Mueller probe to Trump's attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals before the 2020 election.
Some Democrats had held out hope that the McGahn ruling would prompt former national security adviser John Bolton to buck Trump's stonewalling orders and testify about the Ukraine scandal.
But Bolton killed those hopes Tuesday, with his lawyer saying he won't testify despite the McGahn decision.
