Cipollone had a meeting with the committee for nearly eight hours on Friday. He did not answer questions from DailyExpertNews when entering or leaving the room. Cipollone took a 70-minute break from the interview with his counsel throughout the day in a separate conference room. His appearance Friday is the culmination of months of negotiations between his lawyers and the Jan. 6 panel about what topics to discuss. He had had an informal meeting with the committee earlier in April.
According to two sources familiar with the panel’s investigation, Cipollone was one of the few people to spend time with Trump when he watched the Capitol riots unfold on television from a dining room near the Oval Office. The committee heard from other witnesses that Cipollone, along with other senior Trump advisers, including Ivanka Trump and Dan Scavino, were with the president at various times during this time.
Cipollone’s presence in the dining room – which several witnesses have described to the commission – underscores why the commission seeks his on-the-record testimony as a key witness.
Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, a member of the committee, pushed back on the privilege claims Cipollone was able to assert on DailyExpertNews earlier this week.
“Well, the executive privilege belongs to the current president, who has not claimed it when it comes to finding information about the Jan. 6 plot,” Lofgren said. “The privilege of attorney and client could be exercised. But remember, the presidency is his client, not Mr. Trump as a person.”
But Lofgren confirmed: “I’m sure we’ll get information that will be helpful to him and we’ll also respect his dedication to these clients he holds dear.”
Cipollone’s name has come up repeatedly during the commission’s hearings, insofar as he is seen by the commission as a key witness.
At that meeting, Rosen and Cipollone discredited Clark’s credentials for the job and categorically rejected a draft letter Clark wrote in which he falsely claimed that the Justice Department had found evidence of electoral fraud.
Rosen’s deputy Richard Donoghue testified at a committee hearing that Cipollone said of the drafted letter in that meeting, “that letter this man wants to send, that letter is a murder-suicide pact. It will harm anyone who touches it. And we would nothing to do with that letter. I never want to see that letter again.”
The committee disclosed that in her previous informal conversation with Cipollone, Cipollone told the select committee that “he intervened when he learned that Mr. Clark was meeting the president on legal matters without his knowledge, which is strictly against the policy of the White House laundry.”
Hutchinson testified that Cipollone was against Trump calling on his supporters to march to the Capitol in his January 6 morning speech and in particular against Trump joining his supporters at the Capitol.
Hutchinson said Cipollone told her on January 3, “We need to make sure this doesn’t happen, this would be a terrible idea legally for us. We have serious legal concerns if we go to the Capitol that day.”
When violence erupted in the Capitol, Cipollone marched into the office of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, Hutchinson said, and demanded that they talk to Trump about something to intervene.
Hutchinson testified that Meadows told Cipollone the former president didn’t want to do anything and Cipollone said something along the lines of Mark: “Something has to be done or people are going to die, the blood is on your f** *hands.”
Cipollone wanted Trump to say in his January 7, 2021 speech that the rioters should be prosecuted and described as violent, but Hutchinson said those original lines did not make it into the final version of Trump’s speech.
Hutchinson added that from what she understood at the time, the reason people like Cipollone wanted that language there was because there was a “great concern that the 25th Amendment might be invoked.”
The committee played video of testimonials from Jared Kushner saying that Cipollone and his team “always said, ‘Oh, we’re going to resign. We won’t be here if this happens, if that happens.'” But Kushner said, “I kind of took it up on just whining to be honest with you.”
Before Cipollone’s interview was held, the committee had publicly urged that he testify under oath.
“Our committee is confident that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here,” Wyoming GOP Representative Liz Cheney, who serves as the committee’s vice chair, said at the conclusion of the panel’s fourth hearing on Tuesday. 21st of June.
“We believe the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone in person,” she added. “He should appear before this committee and we are working to secure his testimony.”
This story and headline were updated Friday with additional developments.
Andrew Millman and Kaitlan Collins of DailyExpertNews contributed to this report.
