#Acting attorney testifies trumps efforts subvert trial#

#Acting attorney testifies trumps efforts subvert trial#

“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Pelosi had said.īy the time of Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, Trump was out of the White House and Cipollone was no longer representing him. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had suggested they should all be disbarred. The House impeached him with no Republican support the Senate declined to convict.ĭemocrats, at the time, had hammered Cipollone and the other members of Trump’s defense team, saying they had championed arguments with no legal basis. He was also the face of Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment in 20, when Democrats alleged the then-president had abused his power in leveraging critical defense aid to Ukraine in order to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family. He thinks Mike deserves it.’ ”Ĭipollone took on the difficult role of White House counsel in the fall of 2018, just as the midterm elections were approaching and Democrats, poised to flip the House from GOP control, were readying to pepper the Trump White House with new investigations. Meadows, she said, was indifferent, responding “something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. Hutchinson said Cipollone told Meadows something to the effect of, “This is effing crazy, we need to be doing something more.” Cipollone personally,” she said during another hearing on June 21. “We think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the select committee, who has used the public hearings to urge his cooperation. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”Ĭipollone has met with investigators informally behind closed doors, but has not testified under oath. “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Hutchinson told the select committee, relaying Cipollone’s plea to her the morning of Jan. 6, including his persistent intention to march with his supporters to the Capitol that day. But where the committee has cast Meadows as a servile Trump loyalist, they’ve made clear they see Cipollone as being one of the few inner-circle figures to protest the president’s bellicose plans for Jan.

Both men had front-row visibility to the numerous plots to keep the president in power. “Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your effing hands,” Cipollone warned Meadows, according to Hutchinson’s firsthand account.Ĭipollone appears to be a useful foil to Meadows. 6 days in advance, and grew furious during the attack when Trump and Meadows took no steps to curb the violence, even as the mob was threatening to kill Vice President Mike Pence.

During Tuesday’s revealing hearing on Capitol Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, the former lead adviser to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, said Cipollone had foreshadowed trouble on Jan.