Molly Riley/Reuters
President Donald Trump reportedly ordered last June that special counsel Robert Mueller be fired, and White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit rather than ask the Justice Department to do that. According to The New York Times, citing “four people told of the matter,” Trump then backed off. McGahn reportedly told his colleagues at the White House that terminating Mueller would have disastrous implications for the administration and fuel obstruction-of-justice accusations against the president. The president has floated the idea in the past, prompting lawmakers to weigh legislative backstops that would prevent an unjust firing of the special counsel, which is investigating potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Those efforts on Capitol Hill have fizzled in recent months.