A federal judge on Monday ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn must testify in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, rejecting the administration’s claims of immunity for officials by declaring that “no one is above the law”, CNN reported.

McGahn was named an important figure in the 448-page report completed in March by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller that detailed Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s ruling is a setback in the president’s ongoing fight against the impeachment inquiry. “However busy or essential a presidential aide might be, and whatever their proximity to sensitive domestic and national-security projects, the president does not have the power to excuse him or her from taking an action that the law requires,” Jackson said. “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that presidents are not kings.”

McGahn, who left his post in October 2018, had in May defied a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee to testify about Trump’s efforts to impede the now-concluded Mueller investigation.

“The witnesses who have defied Congress at the behest of the president will have to decide whether their duty is to the country, or to a president who believes that he is above the law,” the judge said. “To make the point as plain as possible...with respect to senior-level presidential aides, absolute immunity from compelled congressional process simply does not exist,” Jackson wrote in her 120-page opinion.

“Accordingly, just as with Harriet Miers before him, Donald McGahn must appear before the Committee to provide testimony, and invoke executive privilege where appropriate,” the judge asserted.

A Justice Department spokesperson said they plan to appeal against the ruling in the McGahn case.

The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry as well as other Democratic-led investigations. It has also directed current and former officials to defy subpoenas for documents and testimony.

Trump’s impeachment inquiry focuses on a July 25 telephone call, in which the president had asked his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, a former US vice president, and his son Hunter Biden, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma. McGahn’s testimony could bolster that part of their inquiry.

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