Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the special House committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, said Sunday that Trump’s White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, had not contradicted previous testimony from other witnesses and would be included in the investigation’s final report. after he sat down for a transcribed, videotaped interview with the panel last week.
“In the next few hearings, you’re going to see a little bit of what he said. You’re certainly going to see a lot of that in the report,” Kinzinger, R-Ill., told ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos. “But at no point was there a contradiction in what anyone said.”
Cipollone was recently subpoenaed and spoke to the committee on Friday. The subpoena came after he was repeatedly mentioned during startling testimony last month by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Hutchinson told the committee under oath in a public hearing that Cipollone was wary of then-President Donald Trump’s desire to march his supporters from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where Congress is working to certify the 2020 Electoral College. results.
“Mr. Cipollone said something like, ‘Please make sure we don’t go to the Capitol, Cassidy, stay in touch with me.’ We will be charged with every crime imaginable if we make this move,” Hutchinson said.
The Jan. 6 panel repeatedly mentioned Cipollone as someone who pushed back against Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger speaks as the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol continues to release its findings from a year-long investigation, at the Capitol, June 23, 2022.
Jacqueline Martin/AP, FILE
Both CNN and The New York Times reported that Cipollone was not asked about certain details by Hutchinson during his own interview on Friday.
Kinzinger was also asked on “This Week” about the announcement that Trump could extend executive privilege to his former adviser, Stephen Bannon, who was charged with contempt of Congress for refusing a subpoena related to the investigation on Jan. 6. (Bannon has pleaded not guilty.)
“Does the committee still want to hear it?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“I’ll just say, in a high-profile position, anybody who wants to come in, who knows information, to talk to the select committee, we welcome them to do so,” Kinzinger said. “We welcome them to do so under oath. And we all know the story with our requests to talk to Steve Bannon. So we’ll see how that turns out.”
Kinzinger said he felt the same way about the possible testimony of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers. But these examples have one thing in common, Kinzinger said: “They went from the initial claim that this commission was nothing but a sideshow, something nobody cared about, to all of a sudden — ‘oh yeah, I want to testify publicly in front of him.”
Still, Stephanopoulos noted that the commission’s work on the deadly riots “doesn’t seem to be reaching Republicans,” according to recent polls.
Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel to President Donald Trump, arrives at the Ford House office building to answer questions from Special Committee investigators Jan. 6 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, July 8, 2022.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
“On the periphery, yes, it’s breaking through,” Kinzinger said. “And I think the most important thing is, again, what does the story say five or 10 years from now? Because I can guarantee – well, I can come as close as I can to guaranteeing that – in about 10 years, there won’t be a single Trump supporter that exists anywhere in the country [Richard] Nixon. There were a lot of people who supported Nixon until he was out of office, and then they all said, “No, nobody supported Nixon.”
Kinzinger said he was not worried about the possibility that Republicans would “revisit” the committee’s investigation if the GOP takes back the House in November’s midterm elections.
“I welcome them to see the work we’ve done,” Kinzinger said.
The committee will continue its work this week, with a hearing on Tuesday focusing on ties between Trump’s orbit and extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and another on Thursday that Kinzinger said will focus on Trump’s activities during the uprising itself.
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