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 New York 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. Don 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