Former President Donald Trump’s “worst day” came this week when his White House adviser, Pat Cipollone, was subpoenaed by federal investigators, a former Watergate prosecutor said.
Nick Ackerman, who served as assistant special counsel on Watergate, said Tuesday’s subpoena marked “the worst day for Donald Trump.”
Cipollone has been ordered to testify before a grand jury as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the activities leading up to the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. He has already been interviewed by the House committee investigating the attack, but Ackerman said a federal subpoena would be far more damning of Trump.
“I think the Justice Department is going to get a lot more information from Pat Cipollone,” the former prosecutor told MSNBC’s The Beat on Wednesday. “If he thought that was his worst experience — going before the commission — he’s in for a big surprise when he goes before the grand jury.”
Nick Ackerman, who served as assistant special counsel on Watergate, called Tuesday — the day former White House counsel Pat Cipollone was subpoenaed by the Justice Department — “the worst day for Donald Trump.” Above, Trump speaks during the America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on July 26 in Washington, D.C. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
So far, Cipollone is the highest-ranking White House official summoned by the Justice Department. Mark Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, and Greg Jacobs, Pence’s former top adviser, have also testified before a grand jury in recent weeks.
Ackerman said that unlike the House panel, federal investigators will not allow Trump’s former lawyer to invoke executive privilege over conversations he had with Trump in his final days in office.
“They allowed him to claim attorney-client privilege. None of this is going to get anywhere with the feds,” Ackerman said. “He’s going to ask for privilege with individual questions. They’re going to take him to a judge who’s going to order him to testify and tell him he’s not privileged.”
The former Watergate prosecutor said Cipollone may try to appeal those decisions, but added that the investigation will move much faster than House committee hearings this summer.
“Pat Cipollone will speak more to the grand jury,” he said.
Although the House panel allowed Cipollone to claim privilege over certain discussions to get him to testify, the former White House adviser’s testimony still provided lawmakers with information for the panel to build their case against Trump.
Echoing accounts from other former Trump officials, Cipollone said Trump’s legal team’s plan to seize voting machines was a “terrible idea for the country.”
“There’s a way to contest elections, you know, it happens all the time,” Cipollone said in the interview. “But the idea that the federal government can come in and confiscate voting machines? I don’t see why we even have to tell you that this is a bad idea for the country. It’s a terrible idea.”
Cipollone also told the committee that he believed Trump should have conceded the December 2020 election and that he supported former Attorney General Bill Barr’s conclusion that there was no evidence of election fraud.
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