The committee’s summons was issued to Pat Shipolone on Wednesday, a day after a former Trump adviser testified that a bomb had been alleged in Shipolone concerning the legality of the former president’s actions on January 6, 2021. Benny Thompson, the president of the Democrats, and his Republican vice president, Liz Cheney, issued a joint statement saying the committee should hear from Chipolone. “The selection committee investigation has revealed evidence that Mr Cipollone has repeatedly expressed legal and other concerns about President Trump’s activities on January 6 and in recent days,” the statement said. Cheney had made similar appeals in the past, but her words were more urgent than Tuesday’s testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide who portrayed Chipolone as central to the Jan. 6 events. Cipollone is a former commercial lawyer who counted on Trump as a client until the former president brought him to his government in 2018 as a White House adviser. It came to light during Trump’s first allegation, when he refused to cooperate with the investigation, calling it “unfair” and “completely unfounded.” He continued to serve as the head of Trump’s legal team at subsequent congressional hearings. During a recent series of public hearings about the US Capitol attack, Cipollone was portrayed as one of the few people in the White House who are willing to resist Trump. The congressional hearing about that were exactly where the Trump administration came from. Trump had been frustrated with Rosen for refusing to support the former president’s false allegations of electoral fraud and believed Clark would be more compliant. The committee heard an explosive testimony this week from Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Mendows, who was Trump’s chief of staff in the final days of his administration. Hutchinson told the committee that Shipolone had resisted Meadows’ proposal for Trump to travel to the Capitol to join his supporters. According to her testimony, Cipollone said: “We will be charged with every crime imaginable if we make this movement happen.”

Hutchinson also told the hearing that Cipollone had faced Meadows angrily as the uprising erupted. “Mark, something has to be done otherwise people will die,” she told him. “The blood will be in your hands.” John Dean, the former White House adviser who starred in the Watergate hearings in 1973 when he testified against his former boss Richard Nixon, also invited Chipolone to appear. “I think we need a Pat Cipollone moment,” he told CNN. Cipollone did not respond to a request for comment. The Secret Service, meanwhile, has said it will respond to separate allegations by Hutchinson that Trump had a quarrel with his agents as he tried to force them to take him to the Capitol.