Pat Cipollone, who served as a White House adviser for the last half of Trump’s term, has emerged in recent days as a central player in the behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, after a mob of supporters of Trump had breached the Capitol, and an increasingly frantic group of Trump aides were trying to convince a reluctant president to withdraw them. During Tuesday’s revealing hearing on Capitol Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, a former chief adviser to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, said Cipollone had foreshadowed trouble in January six days before and became enraged during the attack when the Trump and Meadows did nothing to curb the violence, even as the mob threatened to kill Vice President Mike Pence.
“Mark, something has to be done or people are going to die and blood is going to be on your hands,” Cipollone warned Meadows, according to Hutchinson’s first-hand account. Cipollone seems to be a useful card for Meadows. Both men had front-row visibility into the numerous conspiracies to keep the president in power. But where the committee characterized Meadows as a slavish Trump loyalist, they have made it clear they see Cipollone as one of the few inner circle figures to object to the president’s war plans for Jan. 6, including his insistence on marching with of. supporters on Capitol Hill that day. “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Hutchinson told the select committee, conveying Cipollone’s appeal to them on the morning of January 6. “Keep in touch with me. We will be charged with every crime imaginable if we make this movement happen.” Cipollone has met informally with investigators behind closed doors, but has not testified under oath. That’s wrong, said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the select committee’s vice chairwoman, who used the public hearings to urge his cooperation.
“We believe the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone in person,” he said at another hearing on June 21.
After several public appeals, the commission lost patience on Wednesday, issuing a subpoena for Cipollone’s testimony. The subpoena described him as “uniquely placed” to assist the committee as it seeks to examine Trump’s “consciousness and participation in activities undertaken to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.” The White House adviser was aware of Trump’s various strategies to cling to power after his election loss. It was Cipollone’s office that pushed the plan to send fake voters from states Trump lost as “not legally sound.”
“Hey, that’s not legally correct, we’ve fleshed it out internally, it’s OK that you’re thinking that, but we’re not going to entertain it in an official White House capacity on behalf of the President, we’re stopping there,” Hutchinson was quoted as saying by the Office of the White House Counsel in a portion of her testimony released in court documents in April.
He was also at the now-infamous Oval Office meeting on Jan. 3, where multiple legal advisers told Trump to fire his deputy attorney general and replace him with a Justice Department lawyer willing to push the president’s baseless allegations of voter fraud .
The idea that the Justice Department would falsely state that it suspected such fraud, Cipollone warned at that meeting, was the legal equivalent of a “murder-suicide pact,” according to testimony given last week by Richard Donoghue, who was acting as deputy attorney general at the time.
Cipollone or his office also repeatedly raised legal concerns about Trump’s planned speech and actions on Jan. 6 and repeatedly tried to urge the White House to act as the attack unfolded. The White House counsel’s office sought to take language from Trump’s speech by encouraging his supporters to “fight back” as well as march on Capitol Hill. Trump did both anyway. “Both Mr. Herschmann and the White House counsel’s office urged the speechwriters not to include that language for legal concerns, but also for the perspective of what it might portray the president wanting to do that day.” , Hutchinson said, referring to another top Trump. attorney, Eric Herschmann. Cipollone also told Hutchinson days before the attack that he was concerned if Trump marched on Capitol Hill he could appear to be helping to incite riots or incite other crimes.
“Pat was concerned that it would look like we were obstructing justice or obstructing the Electoral College count … that it would look like we were obstructing what was happening on Capitol Hill,” he said.
Cheney has repeatedly said they also view Cipollone’s actions on Jan. 6 as positive. “Indeed, our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right. They tried to stop a number of President Trump’s plans for January 6th,” he said at the committee’s fourth hearing. Hutchinson’s personal testimony added new details to this portrait. Cipollone at least twice urged Meadows to demand action from the president, both when rioters first stormed the Capitol and again when he heard chants of “Hang Mike Pence” coming from the crowd.
Hutchinson said Cipollone said something to Meadows: “This is crazy, we need to do more.” Meadows, he said, was nonchalant, responding “to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it.’ ”
Cipollone took on the difficult role of White House counsel in the fall of 2018 as the midterm elections loomed and Democrats, poised to wrest the House from GOP control, were poised to bolster the Trump White House with new investigations. He was also the face of Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment in 2019 and 2020, when Democrats alleged the then-president had abused his power to seize significant defense aid to Ukraine in order to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family. . The House impeached him without Republican support. the Senate refused to convict.
Democrats, at the time, blasted Cipollone and other members of Trump’s defense team, saying they had advanced arguments without legal basis. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had suggested all be withdrawn.
“I don’t know how they can maintain their status as a lawyer in the comments they’re making,” Pelosi said.
By the time of Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, Trump was out of the White House and Cipollone was no longer representing him. He had returned to a private firm in Washington, D.C., falling off the media radar until recent House hearings on the Jan. 6 attacks thrust him back into the public eye. In the midst of trying to get Cipollone on board, the committee gained a powerful ally in John Dean, former President Nixon’s White House counsel, whose explosive testimony to Congress during the Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s eventual downfall . For his role in the cover-up, Dean was charged with obstruction of justice, pleaded guilty and was jailed for about four months. He was then expelled.
TSA reports highest airport volume since February 2020 Oversight committee to hold hearing on impact of Roe reversal Now, Dean is calling on Cipollone to take a similar step, saying his constitutional oath requires him to cooperate with investigators into the events of January 6.
“It seems like the older you are, the more committed you are to your career and where you’re going from the White House. I think Cipollone has this problem. He has a large family to support. He’s courting Republican clients, presumably, and he’s got influence in Washington. And he’s worried about ruining all of that,” Dean said Wednesday night in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, referring to Cipollone’s 10 children.
“But I will tell you, if we don’t address the problems that this issue raises with Trump on January 6,” he added, “we’re not going to have a great democracy to worry about.”