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Former President Trump’s top White House lawyer Pat Cipollone was subpoenaed Wednesday to testify at the Jan. 6 committee hearings.
Cipollone is said to have raised concerns about the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and at one point threatened to resign.
FILE: White House counsel Pat Cipollone listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House, March 29, 2020, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The committee said he could have information about several efforts by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College.
Cipollone has been characterized as a major player in the behind-the-scenes discussions within the Trump team as the chaos unfolded, including in Tuesday testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Cipollone has been placed in key moments after the election by Hutchinson as well as by former Justice Department lawyers who appeared for a hearing the week before.
Hutchinson said Cipollone warned prior to Jan. 6 that there would be “serious legal concerns” if Trump went to the Capitol with the protesters expected to rally outside.
She testified that Cipollone restated his concerns the morning of Jan. 6 that if Trump did go to the Capitol to try to intervene in the certification of the election, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
WASHINGTON, DC JUNE 28: Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Mark Meadows when he was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, gestures toward her neck as she retells a story involving President Trump as the House Jan. 6 select committee holds a public hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, June 28, 2022.
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, said in their letter to Cipollone that while he had previously given the committee an “informal interview” on April 13, his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony made their subpoena necessary.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who sits on the committee, said last week that Cipollone told the committee he tried to intervene when he heard Trump was being advised by Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who wanted to push false claims of voter fraud. Federal agents recently seized Clark’s cell phone and conducted a search of his Virginia home.
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Clark had drafted a letter for key swing states that was never sent but would have falsely claimed the department had discovered troubling irregularities in the election. Cipollone was quoted by one witness as having told Trump the letter was a “murder-suicide pact.”
Fox News’ Timothy H.J. Nerozzi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
