Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that it was “so bad” for the country and the future of the presidency that one of his former White House advisers was cooperating with a congressional investigation into the Capitol riot.
“Why would a future president of the United States want to have frank and important conversations with his White House adviser if he thought there was even a remote chance that this man who essentially acts as the country’s ‘lawyer’ will ever be brought to justice to a biased and openly hostile congressional committee, or even a fair and reasonable committee, to reveal the inside secrets of foreign policy or other important matters,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform. “So bad for the US!”
Pat Cipollone struck a deal Wednesday to offer additional testimony to a House committee on Jan. 6, according to multiple reports. It remains unclear how much Cipollone will cooperate with the panel after its decision to subpoena him last week. An attorney for Cipollone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to multiple witnesses, Cipollone played a key role in the White House’s response to the Capitol attack and what happened before it. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Cipollone told her that Trump could not go to the Capitol on January 6. She said Cipollone was worried that Trump would “be charged with every crime you can imagine.”
“He was also worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to happen at the Capitol,” Hutchinson told the panel during one of four videotaped showings before her June 28 public testimony.
Trump and Cipollone are not close, and the then-president derided him both to his face and behind his back as one of the worst lawyers, writes The Washington Post. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former top aide, told the committee that he thought Cipollone was “whining” when he threatened to resign after the attack on the Capitol.
Former White House adviser Pat Cipollone, bottom left in red tie, and Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow listen as President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in February 2020. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
History also shows that Trump’s overarching claim of a potentially weakened presidency is not as strong as he claims it is. A similar line of argument was tested during independent counsel Whitewater Ken Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton, which ultimately bill led to Clinton’s impeachment.
The Clinton White House argued that Bruce Lindsay, the White House’s chief counsel and deputy counsel, could not testify before a grand jury about his conversations with the then-president because those discussions were covered by executive privilege. A federal judge ruled that while the privilege existed, Starr’s need to secure the testimony outweighed it. A federal court later rejected the White House’s fallback argument that the conversations were protected by the attorney-client privilege.
“With respect to investigations of federal crimes, and particularly crimes committed by government officials, state attorneys are in a far different position than members of the private bar,” the court’s opinion said. “Their duty is not to defend clients against criminal charges and it is not to protect offenders from public exposure.”
In a further test of executive privilege, then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist declined to intervene when the Clinton White House raised strong objections to Secret Service agents being compelled to testify about what they knew about the president’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Trump has also been burned by the words of one of his White House advisers before. While Trump may try to blur the line, the White House counsel is not the president’s personal lawyer. Rather, the White House’s chief legal officer must advise on the scope of presidential authority, assist in judicial nominations, oversee White House staff compliance with ethics rules and, when necessary, work with the Justice Department.
Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House adviser, was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump world. McGahn told investigators that Trump instructed him to fire Mueller, a claim Trump has previously denied. The Trump White House later entered into a lengthy legal battle when House Democrats demanded that McGahn recount his private testimony in a congressional hearing.
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