Pat Cipollone on Capitol Hill for @January6thCmte closed session. pic.twitter.com/RKR8tcyl5V
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 8, 2022
Cipollone has been doing Big Political Lawyering for many years. He’s got a hard-earned reputation (not to mention the income that’s helped him raise ten children) to protect, so it was blatantly too much to hope that he’d start babbling like a John Eastman or a Rudy Giuliani.
ABC, this morning:
… His testimony will be videotaped and it’s expected that clips of Cipollone’s deposition will be presented during the committee’s upcoming public hearings, according to sources familiar with the planning.
Cipollone and the committee, according to sources, have agreed he can be asked about what he knows about the actions taken by former top Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark to use the powers of the Justice Department to attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, what Cipollone did during the day of Jan. 6, and interactions he was present for or had with former Trump lawyer John Eastman as well as interactions he was present for or had with members of Congress following the 2020 election.
The questioning on those topics is expected to exclude conversations he had directly with former President Donald Trump.
Sources close to Cipollone told ABC News it is possible he may claim some form of executive privilege, which sources familiar with the negotiations say is not expected to be challenged by committee investigators…
Politico:
… Cipollone huddled with committee investigators in a closed-door conference room of the Tip O’Neill House Office Building, emerging about half a dozen times to hold sidebar conversations with his attorney in a separate room. Each time he declined to comment on the interview or whether he was asserting any privileges.
The former White House counsel sat for an informal interview with the panel in April, though he had resisted previous calls from the select panel to testify. He reached an agreement earlier this week with investigators to sit for a transcribed interview.
The select panel did not immediately respond to a request for comment…
Witnesses have told the panel that Cipollone repeatedly raised legal objections to aspects of Trump’s plan — from sending false electors to Congress to a potential march to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cipollone also threatened to resign on multiple occasions, witnesses told the committee — including when Trump threatened to replace DOJ’s leadership days before Jan. 6 and also when Trump sought to name attorney Sidney Powell a special counsel to investigate false allegations election fraud…
It’s unclear whether he broached any of these subjects Friday.
FWIW:
(Lofgren is a member of the Jan6 Committee, and a Democrat.)
Translation: "Not a total douche — I mean, for a lawyer."https://t.co/bWhpmRqlSK
— GrandchildSharpshooterHat (@Popehat) July 8, 2022
OzarkHillbilly
Well, I guess he’s got more balls than Lindsey Graham.
JMG
Or more smarts, or both.
trollhattan
Oh please, oh please, oh please.
Made someone’s day today. Kid brought a teammate here for a couple nights away from school and practice. I congratulated her on making the conference all academic list for XC and she was, “Huh?” so I gave her the list that includes her name. Huzzah!
And now, it’s happy hour. Double-huzzah!
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly: Would one not constitute infinitely more balls than Lindsay Graham?
dr. bloor
Patsy appears to be smart and seasoned enough to know how to give the Committee some splash and substance, even while holding back on enough to protect himself from backlash by anyone who counts on the right.
bbleh
OK IANAL, but is it not incorrect to refer to what he said as “testimony” or a “deposition,” given that, as I understand it, he was not under oath? I believe what happened was an “interview” that was taped and transcribed — which is by no means politically insignificant, as we have seen from the ways this committee has used interview clips — but I don’t think it has the legal significance of testimony or a deposition.
bbleh
@trollhattan: as a percentage, or any ratio, I would say provably yes.
HumboldtBlue
He’s in there defending his heritage.
It’s PAT CIPOLLONE
Not PATSY BALONEY!!!
debbie
@dr. bloor:
We have watched too many stupid lawyers like Ruddy and Eastman and have forgotten they can also be very clever. //
bbleh
@HumboldtBlue: the whole thing begs for Gilbert and Sullivan, no? “Pat Cippolone / he’s no phony,” “Cippolone testimony governmental ceremony lalalalalalalala…”
dr. bloor
@bbleh: I’d pay cash money on the barrel head for tickets to anything that has Bennie Thompson sporting a bicorn and epaulets.
Spanky
bbleh
@dr. bloor: as long as it didn’t come off as a Hamilton knockoff
But now you mention it, Thompson in Founding Fathers regalia, Cheney in, I dunno, 1984-style police prosecutor gray, the rest of the committee as chorus-line, and solos by various witnesses (Cassidy Hutchinson in simple white Little-Bo-Peep frock) … yeah, that could have legs.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Eight hours is a long time
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Not if the 6 breaks were an hour each.
HumboldtBlue
@bbleh:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Perfect!
prostratedragon
@bbleh: Haha! Or maybe Lizzie Borden, who might have looked at first like BoPeep, but …
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lizzie_borden.jpg
NYCMT
Patty Scallions. Will never get tired of that. He still doesn’t have the moral backbone of a John Dean
bbleh
@prostratedragon: right, a rapier comes out of the shepherd’s crook, under the frilly skirt are fencer’s tights, and the light changes to show the Mata Hari eyeliner.
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
That wouldn’t require a lot of heavy lifting.
Anne Laurie
@bbleh: @kilgoretrout has been doing a running riff on “That’s Amore”:
HumboldtBlue
@Anne Laurie:
Well done.
When Trump told him to lie
He sat back and asked why
Cippolone
He did not plead the 5th
He spoke truth right forthwith
Cipplone
Tony G
@trollhattan: Any number divide by zero is infinity. (A S0C7 abend.)
bbleh
@HumboldtBlue: @Anne Laurie:
Executive priv?
No, he gave him the shiv!
Cippolone
HinTN
@Tony G: Actually, no. It’s undefined and we like to say it’s infinity because that’s also undefined. However, divide by zero points, where the equation “blows up”, are infinitely interesting in control system theory. So there’s that.
/pedant
ETA, second martini talking
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Who doesn’t?
bbleh
OK so contra earlier reports, CNN now says “Cipollone testified under oath.” Now that is something.
billcinsd
I hope Cippollone did not try and invoke executive privilege and the committee did try and challenge it if he did.
Also, what the heck does Zoe Lofgren’s last quoted statement mean. We were able to get all the questions we were able to get answered.
glc
@HinTN: It’s not quite that simple, really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compactification_(mathematics)
No martinis, just Dr. Pepper, so no excuse, really. Except that it’s getting late.
dnfree
@Tony G: sock7, blast from the past!
Chris Johnson
Beau of the Fifth Column has been good on this. He was real mad at the idea of normalizing Secret Service talking about what they experienced, but his take on ‘presidential counsel’ is that the President’s lawyer is not so much lawyer to whatever man, but lawyer to THE PRESIDENCY and responsible for taking actions to protect the Presidency, NOT so much the man wearing that hat at any given moment.
In that light, him completely wrecking Trump is no contradiction but rather him serving his office properly, much like how he kept objecting to harebrained and insurrectionist plans. He might not have had authority to overrule the President but it was his obligation to complain, and he serves the Presidency, which is currently held by Joe Biden. Not orange shitweasel.