Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Not all heroes wear capes.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

So many bastards, so little time.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Second rate reporter says what?

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Jan. 6 Committee Open Thread: Summoning Cipollone

Jan. 6 Committee Open Thread: Summoning Cipollone

by | 16 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Unlike most of the JD-holding mooks and lunatics in TFG’s orbit, Pasquale ‘Pat’ Cipollone has a reputation as a competent lawyer who knows the difference between ‘what the statutes say’ and ‘what we want the rules to be’. This is, no doubt, why he has so far avoided an official interview.

This is also why he may not be, as a defendant, totally averse to such an interview at this point in time.

… The morning of Jan. 6... Cipollone restated his concerns that if Trump did go to the Capitol to try to intervene in the certification of the election, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”…

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who sits on the committee, said last week that Cipollone told the committee he tried to intervene when he heard Trump was being advised by Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who wanted to push false claims of voter fraud. Federal agents recently seized Clark’s cell phone and conducted a search of his Virginia home.

Clark had drafted a letter for key swing states that was never sent but would have falsely claimed the department had discovered troubling irregularities in the election. Cipollone was quoted by one witness as having told Trump the letter was a “murder-suicide pact.”

… Cipollone, who many former administration officials credit with helping to prevent Trump from taking legally questionable actions in the months around the 2020 presidential election, has long been considered a key witness by the committee. He has resisted talking further with the committee after previously sitting for a closed-door interview on April 13.

The committee said in its subpoena letter that it has obtained evidence that Cipollone is “uniquely positioned to testify” but he has “declined to cooperate” past that interview, leaving the panel with “no choice” but to issue the subpoena. During recent public hearings, members of the panel have publicly pressured Cipollone to testify. The committee is now taking the step to issue a subpoena in an effort to force his formal cooperation…

Not long after the rioters broke into the US Capitol, Cipollone rushed into then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ office demanding a meeting with Trump, Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6 committee this week.

“I remember Pat saying to him something to the effect of, ‘the rioters have gotten to the Capitol. We need to go down and see the President now,’” Hutchinson said in a videotaped interview.

“And Mark looked up at him and said, ‘He doesn’t want to do anything, Pat,’” she said.

Cipollone, Hutchinson added, emphasized to Meadows the need for action to control the situation to Meadows. She said Cipollone “very clearly said this to Mark – something to the effect of, ‘Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood’s going to be on your f**king hands. This is getting out of control. I’m going down there.’”…

… Cipollone has been mentioned often over the past month as various witnesses who have appeared in the committee’s public hearings have cited his steady presence in off-the-rail meetings and sage, though at times unwelcome, legal advice. But he has remained invisible to the American public, neither agreeing to sit for taped interviews nor appearing as a live witness at a committee hearing.

The committee is hoping that soon changes. Cheney, in particularly, has been determined to secure Cipollone’s cooperation — so far without luck.

But the subpoena may provide cover for Cipollone to cooperate with the committee, as Trump and his allies have sought to keep those in the former president’s orbit from providing the committee with potentially damaging information…

Tuesday’s surprise hearing was designed in part to ramp up pressure on reluctant witnesses such as Cipollone, according to those involved with the investigation, who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. One of those people said there has been a behind-the-scenes strategy to get other witnesses to testify — particularly Cipollone.

“He can probably give the best overview of how [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows, [former Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani and Trump were told what they were doing might be illegal,” said a person involved with the investigation…

Another well-known former White House counsel, who did ultimately testify to Congress about his role in the coverup of the Watergate scandal, said he believes Cipollone has a moral imperative to cooperate with the committee.

“He has taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution on three occasions, twice when he was admitted to the bar with licenses he still holds, and once when he took the job of White House counsel, and I think oaths are serious matters,” said John Dean, Richard M. Nixon’s former counsel. “Here’s a man with 10 children. And I would think he’d want them to remember him as somebody who defended democracy for them.”

(To quote a vintage crime-novel trope: A man with 10 children can’t afford to spend years behind bars.)

Reader Interactions

16Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Going OT early in what is probably a vain effort to stop people from spreading a story about Biden betraaaaying us that has, at the very least, a whole lot of holes in it.

    Read this thread before you lose your shit about the story about Biden appointing an anti-abortion judge in Kentucky where, as the lead panic-promoter herself belatedly acknowledges, there are no vacancies to be filled. Also, Mediate is pretty much the RW version of Raw Story.

  2. 2.

    Danielx

    Don’t think Cipollone wants his legacy to be akin to Roy Cohn’s, however much Trump admired the latter.

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    To quote a vintage crime-novel trope: A man with 10 children can’t afford to spend years behind bars.)

    or even lose his law license (if I’m reading John Dean correctly, and if he’s right), I would imagine.

  6. 6.

    Scout211

    Interesting, a story from earlier this month stated that Cippolone was   “in talks” to testify publicly. Source.

    I guess he backed out and now is being subpoenaed.

    Pat Cipollone, who served as one of former President Donald Trump’s top lawyers in the White House, is in talks with the January 6 House Committee to publicly testify about last year’s Capitol riot, ABC News reported.

    The former White House counsel has indicated that his testimony will be about Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official who reportedly used his powers to try and aid Trump in overturning the 2020 election, the outlet reported, citing sources close to the matter.

    Cipollone had previously spoken with the January 6 committee during an informal interview in April.

    ABC News reported that the committee now wants to put Cipollone on a panel with former acting US Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former DOJ attorney Steve Engel.

  7. 7.

    sdhays

    It’s valid, and I don’t really fault anyone saying this, but it’s still really grating for me whenever anyone who worked in the Tramp White House is described as “defend[ing] democracy”. Showing up and testifying truthfully at a hearing or in court is a fucking low bar. Their boss shit over rules, laws, and norms designed to protect the United States from slipping into autocracy for all 4 years he was President, and they enabled him and worked hard for him to get 4 more years of opportunity to do more of it. Their “red line” was waaaaaay past where it should have been.

    It’s like how George W. Bush got partially rehabilitated by Tramp’s awfulness, when the truth is the W. Administration was just more professional and methodical in their lawlessness – and successful. After all, W’s coup in 2000 was a success.

    / end venting

  8. 8.

    CaseyL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: One of the people I follow on Twitter posted that story, and I replied to her (and to nearly everyone in the thread) that it was misinformation.  Don’t know whether I got through to anyone, though.​
     

    ETA: She deleted the tweet, which is good.

  12. 12.

    James E Powell

    @Ken:

    But it will give him a lifetime ticket to be on CNN, MSNBC, and the Sunday shows as the ReasonableRepublican® who saved the nation by telling Trump no.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    He may want to use a subpoena as a bit of self protection to his livelihood.

    I’m not sure it will work but then I’m not an attorney who participated in an administration that was trying to overthrow the government.

  14. 14.

    Geminid

    @Ruckus: I hope that subpoena gets Cippolne off the fence. He had a ringside seat, even a referee’s view, of the efforts of Powell, Lindell et al’s efforts to bolster the Big Lie that December and of the fight between Trump’s team and the Justice Department. And Cippolone has as good or better knowledge as Hutchinson regarding events in the White House January 6.

    Now that Hutchinson and his own deputy Herschmann have testified, Cippolone has a personal interest in telling his side. He might suffer professionally, but if he’s a good attorney his partners and clients may not hold his testimony against him. A lot of them might be Republicans, but aside from some politicians I think Republican elites are anxious to jettison the Orange Churl and they would welcome Cippolone driving the stake deeper into his poisonous heart.

  15. 15.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: To quote a vintage crime-novel trope: A man with 10 children can’t afford to spend years behind bars.

    I know of a man with 4 kids charged with having a very well cultivated acre of marijuana at the back of his farm, back in the day when that was a biiiig no-no. The Feds offered to let him go if he told them who he was growing it for.

    He served his sentence instead. The accompanying fine more than bankrupted him & he never owned a thing in his own name again.

    (Did I mention the guy was an Italian immigrant? Have you heard of omertà?)

    (BTW & just FTR, I was in my teens before I realized that the true given names of my uncles Pat and Sam were Pasquale and Salvatore, respectively. They came of age at a time when advertising one’s Italian ancestry was, um, not necessarily to one’s advantage.

    (ETA: My father convinced me to take Patrick as my confirmation name in honor of his oldest brother. When I reached the Irish cardinal who was officiating & the attendant priest read out the name [in latin: Patrice] the old guy’s face lit up – he thought he’d found the one Irish kid in our predominantly Polish parish. Little did he know…;^D)

  16. 16.

    H-Bob

    Hutchinson basically confirmed that Trump intended to lead an armed mob (he even facilitated their  having weapons) to the Capitol and disrupt the counting of the Electoral Votes.  The MSM is not discussing this point and instead are focusing on whether Tubby could reach the steering wheel or choke an agent with his tiny hands.

Comments are closed.