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Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone gave a nearly eight-hour closed-door interview Friday to the committee investigating the Jan. 6 violent attack on the Capitol.
The interview focused on his role in preventing former President Donald Trump from overturning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, as well as joining the crowd of people heading to the Capitol.
Mr. Cipollone, once one of President Trump’s confidants who defended him during the first congressional impeachment trial, had initially been reluctant to formally appear for a taped interview.
It remains unclear how much information he shared Friday with lawmakers on the committee and whether he used executive privilege to withhold information about conversations he had with the former president.
The commission has considered Mr. Cipollone a key witness based on some important testimony that has highlighted his seemingly desperate efforts to prevent Mr. Trump’s actions. In some testimony, lawmakers were told that Mr. Cipollone had warned that the president could face as many criminal charges “as he could think of” if he went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a letter accompanying the subpoena to appear before the committee, the lawmakers wrote that Mr. Cipollone’s position to testify is unique.
“Mr. Cipollone repeatedly raised not only legal concerns about President Trump’s actions on January 6, but also in the days leading up to them.“, the chairman of the committee, Democratic legislator Bennie Thompson, said in a statement.
“While we appreciate Mr. Cipollone’s earlier informal engagement with the investigation, the committee wants to hear from him, formally, as it has with other former White House advisers in the past.“, he added.
Mr. Cipollone’s role was brought into focus during a surprise committee hearing last week, when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson spoke about his repeated attempts to stop Mr. Trump from joining the crowd to was marching to the Capitol.
Ms. Hutchinson said that Mr. Cipollone had asked her to persuade her direct boss, chief of staff Mark Meadows, not to let Mr. Trump go to the Capitol.
Ms. Hutchinson testified that she had been told that Mr. Trump became angry when he was not allowed by his security team to go to the Capitol that day. The Secret Service has disputed that part of her testimony where Ms. Hutchinson claims there was an altercation between the former President and a Secret Service employee inside the presidential car. According to her, Mr. Trump tried to take the steering wheel of the car from him by force.
Mr. Cipollone was part of an important meeting held the day before January 6 with officials of the Department of Justice at the White House. He, along with several other officials, threatened to resign if Mr. Trump went ahead with plans to install a new acting attorney general at the head of the department who supported his false claims of election tampering. .
According to a deposition to the commission, during that meeting, Mr. Cipollone Cipollone referred to a proposed letter that made false allegations of manipulation as a political “suicide pact.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump responded to reports about Mr. Cipollone’s cooperation with the commission on the social media platform “Truth Social,” calling the decision a bad thing for the country.
“Why would a future President of the United States want to have frank and meaningful conversations with his White House adviser if he thought there was even a chance that this person, who essentially acts as “ lawyer” for the country, could one day be brought before a party committee in Congress and openly hostile“, the former president wrote./ Voice of America
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