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Tag: pat cipollone

  • Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

    Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

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    CNN
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    In December 2020, after then-Attorney General William Barr publicly refuted President Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged, White House staffers drafted a press release that would’ve called for the firing of anyone who disagreed with Trump’s claims, according to a new transcript from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

    The draft statement ended with, “Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in 2020 election should be fired,” according to the deposition.

    The draft statement – which was never sent out, and hadn’t been revealed before Friday – was brought up during the committee’s deposition of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the transcript. Congressional investigators told him that they likely obtained the statement from the National Archives, which turned over documents from the Trump White House.

    The committee also said during the Cipollone interview that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously testified that Mark Meadows gave her the draft statement – which was a handwritten note – after an Oval Office meeting on the same day Barr made his public comments refuting Trump. It appears that the statement didn’t explicitly name Barr.

    The committee claimed that Hutchinson testified that she was instructed by Meadows to seek Cipollone’s approval before the statement was posted on social media. The committee said Hutchinson testified that Cipollone’s response was, “God, no.” Cipollone said he had no recollection of the draft statement or the episode.

    “By the way, I wasn’t fired,” Cipollone quipped to the committee.

    The Cipollone deposition is one of nearly 50 additional transcripts released Friday night by the January 6 committee. The latest batch contained interviews with key witnesses, including Trump White House insiders and lawyers who worked for the Trump campaign.

    Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary, said she had no recollection of discussing the 25th Amendment after the insurrection, according to a transcript of her deposition with the January 6 committee released Friday.

    Asked by congressional investigators if she had concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, Chao said that she didn’t go to many White House meetings by the end of Trump’s tenure. Chao was careful not to be too critical of Trump in her interview. She said she had not met with him in some time.

    “By that time, I did not have personal contact with him,” Chao said. “I did not go to the White House, there were no meetings, so I hadn’t been in close proximity to him.”

    Chao, who resigned on January 6, said she stepped down once she realized “the full ramifications of the actions that were taken by some people and the results that occurred.” Asked about Trump’s conduct that day, she said: “I wish he had acted differently.”

    Asked about the inner workings of the Trump White House, and who he trusted among his aides and advisers, Chao said, “I’m not so sure he trusted anyone.”

    Chao said she does not remember talking to other cabinet members that day – even though Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the committee he spoke with her.

    Ivanka Trump, who served as senior White House adviser to her father, handed over text messages to the January 6 committee, a newly released transcript of her testimony reveals.

    It wasn’t previously known that she provided text messages to the panel, though video clips from her April deposition were featured during the committee’s public hearings this summer.

    The content of the texts messages remains unclear.

    The committee’s line of questioning did not delve into the contents of her texts, but instead veered into her father’s cell phone habits, including whether he ever sent and received text messages. Ivanka Trump said she “never” exchanged texts with her father on “any device.”

    Still, this is the latest example of how the committee obtained a wealth of evidence, including materials that weren’t previously known.

    Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-peddling attorney who helped Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, said Trump and his allies believed he couldn’t have lost because of his large “rallies” and “common sense,” according to a transcript of her deposition to the January 6 committee released Friday.

    She said that was the consensus in the room at a White House meeting that she attended with Trump, just a few days after the election. She told the committee that Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani was also there along with White House aides, according to the transcript.

    “He wanted to know the truth,” Powell said, referring to Trump. “And our general consensus was that the vast majority of people had poured out in support of the President. The rallies indicated that. All the information that we had indicated that. And the numbers that we saw on election night simply didn’t jibe with common sense.”

    She also claimed “math geniuses” reached out to her to tell her that Joe Biden’s victory was statistically impossible.

    The testimony shows just how paper-thin the fraud theories emanating from Trump’s orbit actually were.

    Despite her assertions, there is no evidence that the outcome of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud or vote-rigging. Many of the conspiracies Powell has promoted about the election have been thoroughly debunked.

    During the presidential transition, Trump nearly appointed Powell as a special counsel to use the powers of the federal government to investigate her baseless voter fraud theories. Senior White House officials and attorneys vehemently opposed that idea and it never ended up happening.

    Cipollone told the January 6 committee that it “would have been a disaster” if Trump made Powell a special counsel, according to a transcript of his deposition.

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  • Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

    Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick Philbin testified to a federal grand jury for several hours in Washington, DC, on Friday, indicating the Justice Department had compelled the men to answer more questions in the January 6, 2021, criminal investigation despite challenges from Donald Trump’s legal team.

    The January 6 grand jury activity is the latest indication the investigation – now led by special counsel Jack Smith – has pushed in recent months to unearth new details about direct conversations with the former president and advice given to him after the election.

    Cipollone was first seen entering the grand jury area with his attorney, Michael Purpura, before 9 a.m., and he was there for more than five hours. Purpura has not responded to requests for comment. The grand jury proceedings themselves are confidential.

    Philbin, whom Purpura also represents, headed into the grand jury area just before the lunch hour on Friday, staying until about 4 p.m.

    Thomas Windom and Mary Dohrmann, prosecutors in the January 6 investigation who are now to be led by Smith, were also seen walking in with Cipollone.

    The investigators are looking at efforts to obstruct the transfer of power at the end of Trump’s presidency and have obtained testimony from several administration advisers closest to the former president after the election and as the Capitol was attacked by his supporters.

    CNN previously reported that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court, who oversees the federal grand juries in Washington, ordered Cipollone and Philbin to provide additional grand jury testimony this month, following up on their testimony in the fall. The judge has repeatedly rejected Trump’s privilege claims in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to people briefed on the matter.

    Philbin and Cipollone were both key witnesses to Trump’s actions in the last days of his presidency. Cipollone repeatedly pushed back on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report, he and Philbin opposed a proposal to replace the attorney general with someone willing to look into false claims of election fraud.

    Previously, the Justice Department compelled top advisers from Vice President Mike Pence’s office to testify to the grand jury. They had sought to protect Pence in January 2021 from Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election.

    Earlier this week, Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who worked with Trump on his speech at the Ellipse, had his own day before the grand jury.

    On Thursday, another leg of Smith’s special counsel investigation – into the handling of documents at Mar-a-Lago after the presidency – was active in the courthouse. At least one Mar-a-Lago prosecutor was working in the secret grand jury proceedings, as three aides to Trump, Dan Scavino, William Russell and Beau Harrison, each appeared, according to sources familiar with them. Their attorney declined to comment.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • DOJ asks judge to force Trump White House lawyers to testify in Jan. 6 probe | CNN Politics

    DOJ asks judge to force Trump White House lawyers to testify in Jan. 6 probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force the top two lawyers from Donald Trump’s White House counsel’s office to testify about their conversations with the former President, as it tries to break through the privilege firewall Trump has used to avoid scrutiny of his actions on January 6, 2021, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

    The move to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin just last week is part of a set of secret court proceedings. Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying before a criminal grand jury about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.

    But the Justice Department successfully secured answers from top vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short over the past three weeks in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    Jacob’s testimony on October 6, which has not been previously reported, is the first identifiable time when the confidentiality Trump had tried to maintain around the West Wing after the 2020 election has been pierced in the criminal probe following a court battle. A week after Jacob spoke to the grand jury again, Short had his own grand jury appearance date, CNN reported.

    All four men previously declined to answer some questions about advice and interactions with Trump when they testified in recent months in the secret criminal probe. Trump lost the court battles related to Jacob and Short before the chief judge of the trial-level US District Court in Washington, DC, last month.

    Attorneys for the men whom the DOJ is seeking to compel have declined to comment for this story or haven’t responded to requests. Cipollone and Philbin didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment.

    All four men have been willing to be as cooperative as the law demands, leaving Trump’s team to handle the fight over certain details in the investigation, the sources say.

    The litigation around Cipollone and Philbin’s testimony may be important for investigators in the long run, given how close the pair was to the Trump leading up to and during the Capitol riot. Prosecutors are likely to aim for the grand jury to hear about their direct conversations with the then-President.

    The disputes – conducted under seal in court because they involve grand jury activity – may also spawn several more court fights that will be crucial for prosecutors as they work to bring criminal charges related to Trump’s post-election efforts.

    Witnesses the federal grand jury has subpoenaed, such as former White House officials Mark Meadows, Eric Herschmann, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, also could decline to describe their conversations with Trump or advice being given to him after the election, several sources familiar with the investigation say.

    Trump and his allies have used claims of confidentiality – both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege – with mixed results in multiple legal quagmires that surround the former President. Those include the January 6 federal criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents federal criminal investigation, Georgia’s Fulton County investigation of election meddling, and the House select committee probe of January 6 as well. Some of the privilege arguments Trump has raised have never been settled in federal court, and some of the fights could lead to the Supreme Court.

    Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the “weaponized” Justice Department in a statement and referred to the probes surrounding the former President as “witch hunts.”

    According to the sources, the Justice Department won a trial-level judge’s order at the end of September that said Jacob and Short must testify in response to certain questions over which Trump’s team had tried to claim presidential and attorney-client confidentiality.

    The sealed court case, stemming from the grand jury’s work, had been before the chief judge of the DC District Court, Beryl Howell. Howell refused to put on hold Jacob and Short’s testimony while Trump’s team appealed, a source said.

    The Trump team, meanwhile, took several days to respond to their loss before Howell in court. The Justice Department set a quick-turnaround subpoena date for Jacob, leaving him to head into the grand jury under subpoena on October 6, according to several sources.

    The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is still considering legal arguments from Trump’s defense lawyers and the Justice Department over his ability to make executive and attorney-client privilege claims.

    How that is resolved – either by the appeals court or even the Supreme Court, if Trump pursues it that far – could have significant consequences for the January 6 criminal investigation, and for multiple witnesses who may be refusing to share some of what they know because of Trump’s privilege claims.

    Among a large group of former top Trump officials, Jacob has been one of the most searing voices condemning the then-President’s actions after the election, especially regarding the pressure he and his election attorney, John Eastman, tried to place on then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of the presidential vote.

    Jacob has been a harsh critic of Eastman, who is also of interest to prosecutors, dating back to when Eastman tried to convince Pence’s office the vice president alone could override the vote. He told Eastman at the time the right-wing attorney was a “serpent in the ear” of the President, and wrote while Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, “thanks to your bulls**t, we are now under siege.”

    Jacob added to a parade of star witnesses at public House select committee hearings this summer, speaking candidly about his disgust with what he witnessed inside the White House complex from his high-ranking position administration.

    “There is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person would choose the American President, and then unbroken historical practice for 230 years, that the vice president did not have such an authority,” Jacob testified in July.

    But what Jacob and Short knew of Trump’s conversations, they wouldn’t disclose to the House nor to the grand jury until this month.

    In a taped House select committee deposition, Cipollone answered many questions about what happened inside the West Wing on January 6 but declined to describe communications between him and Trump.

    Cipollone’s and Philbin’s roles as White House lawyers raise complicated legal questions about whether Trump can claim confidentiality over the legal advice they gave him, as well as whether a former president can assert executive privilege to hold off criminal investigators.

    President Joe Biden has repeatedly declined to assert executive privilege around January 6 information, essentially leaving the fight for Trump to wage opposite the Justice Department.

    While the courts will look at each situation individually, history isn’t on Trump’s side. Federal prosecutors investigating former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were able to overcome attorney-client privilege assertions for White House counsel as well as executive privilege assertions so the grand jury could hear closely guarded information.

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