Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      What Happened on Dec. 18 at ‘the Craziest Meeting of the Trump Presidency’?

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      Digging into the aftermath of the 2020 election, members of the Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday focused on a meeting between former President Donald J. Trump and outside advisers that devolved into what they described as a chaotic confrontation over a desperate attempt to overturn the election.Drawing from testimony from former Attorney General William P. Barr and others, the committee described in detail a hastily organized meeting in which advisers proposed an executive order to have the military seize voting machines in crucial states Mr. Trump had lost.“On Friday, Dec. 18, his team of outside advisers paid him a surprise visit in the White House that would quickly become the stuff of legend,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland. “The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal, and the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency.”According to the panel, in the weeks before the meeting in December, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers including Mr. Barr and Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, had publicly and privately dismissed the possibility of wide-scale voter fraud, and urged Mr. Trump to concede. Mr. Barr made a public announcement on Dec. 1 to affirm that he had not found significant evidence of fraud.Just four days before the meeting, on Dec. 14, the Electoral College met to certify the election results, which in a taped interview Mr. Barr told the committee “should have been the end of the matter.”But on the evening of Dec. 18, several of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers, including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, came to Mr. Trump to urge him to consider the plan to seize voting machines.As the meeting grew heated, Mr. Cipollone told the committee that other plans were discussed, including to grant Ms. Powell a security clearance and name her special counsel, putting her in charge of Mr. Trump’s legal effort to contest the election results.The meeting lasted hours, moving from the Oval Office to other areas of the West Wing before ending in the presidential residence, according to the committee. And arguments broke out throughout the evening, including “challenges to physically fight,” Mr. Raskin said.In a taped interview presented on Tuesday, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary, said, “At times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other — it wasn’t just sort of people sitting around on a couch like chit-chatting.”The panel showed evidence suggesting that the meeting ended around midnight, without agreement among participants on how to proceed.But committee members used the hearing on Tuesday to suggest that as Mr. Trump apparently grew frustrated with the lack of options to contest the election results during the meeting in December, it was in that moment that he turned to his supporters, encouraging them to come to Washington on Jan 6.Just over an hour after the meeting was said to have ended, Mr. Trump tweeted at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19 that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the election. In the tweet, he also urged supporters to gather in Washington to demonstrate, drawing dozens of responses from people sharing plans to occupy the Capitol building and photos of weapons they said they planned to bring.“Be there, will be wild,” the tweet said. More

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      How Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House Counsel, Could Help the Jan. 6 Panel

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      Pat A. Cipollone, President Donald J. Trump’s second and final White House counsel, appeared for a videotaped, transcribed interview with the House Jan. 6 committee last week after being subpoenaed, and his testimony could help the panel flesh out episodes at the heart of its investigation.Mr. Cipollone — who also sat for an informal interview with the committee in April — was present for several key meetings related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to retain power and subvert the results of the 2020 election. Several witnesses have described Mr. Cipollone as opposing those efforts at critical moments.In particular, Mr. Cipollone was at a meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, in the Oval Office. During that meeting, Mr. Trump entertained proposals from his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn; a lawyer, Sidney Powell; and Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com, to use the military or the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines to look for electoral fraud.Since Mr. Cipollone’s informal appearance in April, the committee has heard from many additional witnesses. One of them — Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff in the final year of the Trump administration — provided the committee with extensive testimony about Mr. Trump’s actions and statements ahead of the Capitol riot and during it, as well as about conversations she said she had with senior advisers.Ms. Hutchinson described a conversation with Mr. Cipollone in which he cautioned against Mr. Trump traveling to the Capitol with his supporters after his planned speech at a rally at the Ellipse, near the White House.In Ms. Hutchinson’s telling, Mr. Cipollone warned that “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”Two people close to Mr. Cipollone said he did not recall that conversation, and that the committee had been alerted before his testimony last week that he would not confirm it had taken place.Instead, the committee focused on soliciting testimony from Mr. Cipollone that could support information they had gathered from other witnesses.According to two people familiar with his appearance, Mr. Cipollone was asked about discussions related to presidential pardons in the final weeks of the presidency. He was also asked his opinion of Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud, as well as Mr. Trump’s attacks on Vice President Mike Pence. More

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      Raskin Brings Expertise on Right-Wing Extremism to Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      The Democrat from Maryland has been delving into the rising threat of white nationalism and white supremacy for five years. He will lead the inquiry’s hearing on the subject on Tuesday.WASHINGTON — When Representative Jamie Raskin enters a Capitol Hill hearing room on Tuesday to lay out what the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack has uncovered about the role of domestic extremists in the riot, it will be his latest — and potentially most important — step in a five-year effort to crush a dangerous movement.Long before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault, Mr. Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, had thrown himself into stamping out the rise of white nationalism and domestic extremism in America. He trained his focus on the issue after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., five years ago. Since then, he has held teach-ins, led a multipart House investigation that exposed the lackluster federal effort to confront the threat, released intelligence assessments indicating that white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement and strategized about ways to crack down on paramilitary groups.Now, with millions of Americans expected to tune in, Mr. Raskin — along with Representative Stephanie Murphy, Democrat of Florida — is set to take a leading role in a hearing that promises to dig deeply into how far-right groups helped to orchestrate and carry out the Jan. 6 assault at the Capitol — and how they were brought together, incited and empowered by President Donald J. Trump.“Charlottesville was a rude awakening for the country,” Mr. Raskin, 59, said in an interview, rattling off a list of deadly hate crimes that had taken place in the years before the siege on the Capitol. “There is a real pattern of young, white men getting hyped up on racist provocation and incitement.”Tuesday’s session, set for 1 p.m., is expected to document how, after Mr. Trump’s many efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed, he and his allies turned to violent far-right extremist groups whose support Mr. Trump had long cultivated, who in turn began assembling a mob to pressure Congress to reject the will of the voters.Supporters of President Donald J. Trump at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“There were Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, the QAnon network, Boogaloo Boys, militia men and other assorted extremist and religious cults that assembled under the banner of ‘Stop The Steal,’ ” Mr. Raskin said, referring to the movement that spread Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. “This was quite a coming-out party for a lot of extremist, antigovernment groups and white nationalist groups that had never worked together before.”It has long been known that the mob was energized by Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Dec. 19, 2020, in which he called for his supporters to come to Washington for a rally on Jan. 6 that would “be wild.” Mr. Raskin and Ms. Murphy plan to detail a clear “call and response” between the president and his extreme supporters.“There’s no doubt that Donald Trump’s tweet urging everyone to descend upon Washington for a wild protest on Jan. 6 succeeded in galvanizing and unifying the dangerous extremists of the country,” Mr. Raskin said.Mr. Raskin has hinted at disclosing evidence of more direct ties between Mr. Trump and far-right groups, though he has declined to preview any. The panel plans to detail known links between the political operative Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s, the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the extremist groups.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Should Biden Run Again in 2024?

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      More from our inbox:A Capitol Policeman’s Account ‘Will Stand Forever as Testimony’How Ectopic Pregnancies Will Be Treated After RoePresident Biden in Cleveland last week. Only 26 percent of Democratic voters said the party should renominate him in 2024.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats Sour on Biden, Citing Age and Economy” (front page, July 11):Joe Biden reads the polls — all politicians do — and the numbers are dismal. His current performance approval ratings are in the tank. As alarming to Mr. Biden may be the public’s antipathy toward his running again in 2024.Barely one in four Democrats definitely want him to run again. This isn’t a small wave; it’s a veritable tsunami. Whether it’s people’s feelings about how Mr. Biden has performed in office, or whether it’s their alarm at his advancing age (he’ll be nearly 82 on Election Day in 2024), it doesn’t really matter. The message is clear — even his own party faithful feel Mr. Biden should not run.President Biden, soon after the midterm elections in November, should declare his intention not to run again. This will unfreeze the Democratic field and give his party a better chance to retain the presidency after 2024.Ken DerowSwarthmore, Pa.To the Editor:Democrats’ discontent with President Biden seems kind of childish. Because he hasn’t fixed everything in half a term, they’re ready to jump ship for someone else.Mr. Biden beat the most corrupt president in history. It is doubtful another Democrat could have done that. With his economic policies, we have near full employment. Most of the persistent problems stem from the Trumpist G.O.P.No president has absolute power. But Mr. Biden could do more with substantial Democratic majorities in all areas of government. It is bizarre that he takes the heat for Republican roadblocks. They have shifted the blame for their own perfidy to Mr. Biden.Howard SchmittGreen Tree, Pa.To the Editor:As someone born in 1930 I’m sensitive to the signs of aging in other people. I’m also a yellow dog Democrat.It’s not his policies or his stance on important matters that give us pause: It’s his age. For instance, the way he walks, as if afraid he might just topple over; the way he delivers a speech, running his words together, not enunciating clearly; his overall demeanor that seems to suggest he’d rather be anywhere else.He’s not aging prematurely; he’s just plain old.I hope his people let him know that it’s time for him to move along and become an elder statesman, at which point he’ll get a hell of a lot more respect than he does now.Anne BernaysTruro, Mass.To the Editor:Re “Biden, at 79, Shows Signs of Age and Aides Fret About His Image” (front page, July 10):Despite all that he has on his plate, I don’t perceive any decline, physically or mentally, in President Biden’s capacity to lead this nation. He exhibits the same straightforward, easygoing and relatable persona that has been his trademark since he was elected senator 50 years ago.While I did have concerns about his capacity to handle the rigors of presidential office upon his election, now that he is well into the second year of his presidency, those reservations have been alleviated to the degree that he has shown that he is up to the job, the most demanding on the face of the earth.No one knows what the future holds, good or bad. Until such time as it can be objectively demonstrated that Mr. Biden is unfit for office, rumblings from within his administration and without about his allegedly diminished leadership capabilities are just that, and are not worthy of front-page coverage.Mark GodesChelsea, Mass.To the Editor:Re “Biden Promised Calm, but Base Wants a Fighter” (front page, July 7):If Democrats have learned nothing else in this Era of Trump, it’s that playing by the rules, playing fair, being honorable and “going high when they go low” has neither roused the base nor excited the electorate.I am a lifelong Democrat, voting for the D column in every election since I returned from Vietnam in 1969. I believe in the platform of the party, and I was a New Hampshire state representative. One lesson I learned in that Legislature was that while there are some Republicans who are moderately reasonable, as a whole they are steadfast in their beliefs, with a rock-hard resistance to compromise.I want a pit bull as tenacious representing my core political beliefs as Republicans are representing theirs. I want passion in the Senate. I want pointed anger at what the Republican Party has done and continues to do to my country, to our democracy.I voted for Joe Biden, but I am becoming more and more critical of seeing his tepid responses and watered down solutions to what the Republicans are trying to do.We need a more dynamic response from him other than urging people to vote in November.Len DiSesaDresher, Pa.A Capitol Policeman’s Account ‘Will Stand Forever as Testimony’Sergeant Gonell being sworn in before testifying at a Jan. 6 committee hearing.Pool photo by Oliver ContrerasTo the Editor:Re “Trump Wrecked Lives on Jan. 6. I Should Know,” by Aquilino Gonell (Opinion guest essay, July 11):Much appreciation to Sergeant Gonell of the Capitol Police for his essay vividly expressing what really happened on Jan. 6, expanding the public’s understanding of the damage done personally to our law enforcement people, and to our government and democracy. This essay will stand forever as testimony.We hope he keeps writing as the hearings continue with witness testimony. Help explain the truth as more facts come out, despite Republican attempts to distort and deny reality.The hostile attitudes of the armed mobs were already formed, and they were just waiting for their chance to act. They responded eagerly to an authoritarian president who disrespected democracy, who refused to accept his election defeat. They saw their chance, and they let loose.Meredith BalkNew YorkHow Ectopic Pregnancies Will Be Treated After Roe Kristina TzekovaTo the Editor:Re “In a Post-Roe World, We Can Avoid Pitting Mothers Against Babies,” by Leah Libresco Sargeant (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, July 4):I’d like to thank Mrs. Sargeant for her thought-provoking piece. She has my condolences for her pregnancy losses. However, I am troubled that she never acknowledges that she was fortunate enough to receive prompt and appropriate treatment for her ectopic pregnancy — treatment that will now be denied or dangerously delayed for many women in a post-Roe world.Her stated goal in managing ectopic pregnancies — “treating mother and child with dignity” — is laudable but does nothing to address the core issue: that many states are now outlawing or severely limiting a lifesaving surgical procedure. As an emergency medicine physician, I have cared for women with ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and I can assure her that there is no dignity in unnecessarily bleeding to death from a treatable condition.I hope that Mrs. Sargeant can turn her talents to advocating for all women to receive the same standard of care that she received.Margaret Gluntz KrebsPerrysburg, OhioTo the Editor:Leah Libresco Sargeant states, “A baby delivered in the first trimester because of an ectopic pregnancy definitely won’t survive.” In an ectopic pregnancy, there is no baby. As a matter of science, you are not pitting mothers against babies. The woman has a dangerous condition that if not properly treated may result in her death.Treatment of an ectopic pregnancy does not require choosing the woman over the fetus. There is no choice because in an ectopic pregnancy the fetus cannot survive. In any case, the proper term is “fetus.” Using the term “baby” in this context is simply wrong. The fetus is not a baby and under the circumstances of an ectopic pregnancy can never become a baby.Obviously the author has strong religious beliefs, which she should be able to pursue in her life. She has no right, however, to impose those beliefs on others.Elise SingerPhiladelphia More

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      Stephen Bannon Agrees to Testify to Jan. 6 Panel

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      Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser, made the abrupt about-face after the former president authorized him to talk to investigators.WASHINGTON — With his criminal trial for contempt of Congress approaching, Stephen K. Bannon, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s who was involved in his plans to overturn the 2020 election, has informed the House committee investigating the Capitol attack that he is now willing to testify, according to two letters obtained by The New York Times.His decision is a remarkable about-face for Mr. Bannon, who until Saturday had been among the most obstinate and defiant of the committee’s potential witnesses. He had promised to turn the criminal case against him into the “misdemeanor from hell” for the Justice Department.But with the possibility of two years in jail and large fines looming on the horizon, Mr. Bannon has been authorized to testify by Mr. Trump, his lawyer told the committee late on Saturday in a letter, which was reported earlier by The Guardian.The former president had previously instructed Mr. Bannon and other associates not to cooperate with the panel, claiming that executive privilege — a president’s power to withhold certain internal executive branch information, especially confidential communications involving him or his top aides — compelled them to stay silent. But in recent days, as several witnesses have come forward to offer the House panel damning testimony about his conduct, Mr. Trump has grown frustrated that one of his fiercest defenders has not yet appeared before the committee, people close to him said.“Mr. Bannon is willing to, and indeed prefers, to testify at your public hearing,” Robert J. Costello, Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, wrote to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Cassidy Hutchinson: Why the Jan. 6 Committee Rushed Her Testimony

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      Sequestered with family and security, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has in the process developed an unlikely bond with Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman.WASHINGTON — The day before Cassidy Hutchinson was deposed for a fourth time by the Jan. 6 committee, the former Trump White House aide received a phone message that would dramatically change the plans of the panel and write a new chapter in American politics.On that day in June, the caller told Ms. Hutchinson, as Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman, later disclosed: A person “let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal. And you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”At Ms. Hutchinson’s deposition the next day, committee members investigating the attack on the Capitol were so alarmed by what they considered a clear case of witness tampering — not to mention Ms. Hutchinson’s shocking account of President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, 2021 — that they decided in a meeting on June 24, a Friday, to hold an emergency public hearing with Ms. Hutchinson as the surprise witness the following Tuesday.The speed, people close to the committee said, was for two crucial reasons: Ms. Hutchinson was under intense pressure from Trump World, and panel members believed that getting her story out in public would make her less vulnerable, attract powerful allies and be its own kind of protection. The committee also had to move fast, the people said, to avoid leaks of some of the most explosive testimony ever heard on Capitol Hill.In the two weeks since, Ms. Hutchinson’s account of an unhinged president who urged his armed supporters to march to the Capitol, lashed out at his Secret Service detail and hurled his lunch against a wall has turned her into a figure of both admiration and scorn — lauded by Trump critics as a 21st-century John Dean and attacked by Mr. Trump as a “total phony.”Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony also pushed the committee to redouble its efforts to interview Pat A. Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, who appeared in private before the panel on Friday. His videotaped testimony is expected to be shown at the committee’s next public hearing on Tuesday.Ms. Hutchinson and Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, have developed an unlikely bond.Doug Mills/The New York TimesNow unemployed and sequestered with family and a security detail, Ms. Hutchinson, 26, has developed an unlikely bond with Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and onetime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during the George W. Bush administration — a crisis environment of another era when she learned to work among competing male egos. More recently, as someone ostracized by her party and stripped of her leadership post for her denunciations of Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney admires the younger woman’s willingness to risk her alliances and professional standing by recounting what she saw in the final days of the Trump White House, friends say.“I have been incredibly moved by young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the Jan. 6 committee,” Ms. Cheney said in concluding a recent speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.When she mentioned Ms. Hutchinson’s name, the audience erupted in applause.Influence Beyond Her YearsThe path that led a young Trump loyalist to become a star witness against the former president was not exactly prefigured by Ms. Hutchinson’s biography.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Questions Cipollone on Pardons and Trump’s Election Claims

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      Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, appeared before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack for roughly eight hours on Friday.WASHINGTON — Pat A. Cipollone, who served as White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, was asked detailed questions on Friday about pardons, false election fraud claims and the former president’s pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, according to three people familiar with his testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The panel did not press him to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who captivated the country late last month with her account of an out-of-control president willing to embrace violence and stop at nothing to stay in power, the people said.During a roughly eight-hour interview conducted behind closed doors in the O’Neill House Office Building, the panel covered some of the same ground it did during an informal interview with Mr. Cipollone in April. In the session on Friday, which took place only after Mr. Cipollone was served with a subpoena, investigators focused mainly on Mr. Cipollone’s views on the events of Jan. 6 and generally did not ask about his views of other witnesses’ accounts.Mr. Cipollone, who fought against the most extreme plans to overturn the 2020 election but has long held that his direct conversations with Mr. Trump are protected by executive privilege and attorney-client privilege, invoked certain privileges in declining to answer some of the committee’s questions.Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the panel, said the committee “received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump’s misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings.”“This includes information demonstrating Donald Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” Mr. Mulvey said. “The testimony also corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.”The panel recorded Mr. Cipollone on video with potential plans to use clips of his testimony at upcoming hearings. Aides have begun strategizing about whether and where to adjust scripts to include key clips, one person said. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.In the interview, Mr. Cipollone was asked about Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. The panel has asked similar questions of top Justice Department officials, White House lawyers and Trump campaign officials, who have testified that they did not agree with the effort to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Cipollone also broke with Mr. Trump in response to questions about the former president’s pressure campaign against Mr. Pence, which included personal meetings, a profane phone call and even a post on Twitter attacking the vice president as rioters stormed the Capitol pledging to hang him, people familiar with the testimony said.Mr. Cipollone’s agreement to sit for an interview before the panel had prompted speculation that his testimony could either buttress or contradict the account of Ms. Hutchinson, who attributed some of the most damning statements about Mr. Trump’s behavior to Mr. Cipollone. For instance, she testified that Mr. Cipollone told her on the morning of Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump’s plan to accompany the mob to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone’s actions that day said he did not recall making that comment to Ms. Hutchinson. Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked. He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to people familiar with the questions.“Why are Pat Cipollone & his lawyers letting the J6 Committee get away with suborning Cassidy Hutchinson’s perjury?” Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who has also testified before the panel, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “Only cowards let the Left bully them into sitting quietly instead of speaking up and telling the truth. Stop hiding on background, Pat. Grow a spine & go on record.”Mr. Mulvey said there was no “preinterview agreement to limit Cipollone’s testimony” and any suggestion otherwise was “completely false.”Among other subjects, Mr. Cipollone was asked in the interview about conversations in which presidential pardons were discussed.The committee did not press Mr. Cipollone to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who appeared before the panel last month.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. Hutchinson has testified that on Jan. 7, the day after the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump wanted to promise pardons for those involved in the attack, but Mr. Cipollone argued to remove language making such a promise from remarks that the president was to deliver.She has also testified that members of Congress and others close to Mr. Trump sought pardons after the violence of Jan. 6.An adviser to Mr. Cipollone declined to comment on his appearance before the panel.“He was candid with the committee,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the panel, said on CNN on Friday. “He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers.”She added, “We gained some additional insight into the actual day, Jan. 6.”Ms. Lofgren said Mr. Cipollone did not contradict other witnesses. “There were things that he might not be present for or in some cases could not recall with precision,” she said.Mr. Cipollone’s testimony came after he reached a deal to testify before the panel, which had pressed him for weeks to cooperate and issued him a subpoena last month.Mr. Cipollone was a witness to key moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about sending false letters to state officials about election fraud and seizing voting machines. He was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol.Mr. Trump has railed against Mr. Cipollone’s cooperation. On Thursday, he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may someday be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress.” More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Secures Deal for Cipollone to Be Interviewed

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      The former White House counsel pushed back on President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and was in the West Wing to witness his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel to President Donald J. Trump who repeatedly fought Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has reached a deal to be interviewed by Friday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, according to people familiar with the inquiry.The agreement was a breakthrough for the panel, which has pressed for weeks for Mr. Cipollone to cooperate — and issued a subpoena to him last week — believing he could provide crucial testimony.Mr. Cipollone was a witness to pivotal moments in Mr. Trump’s push to invalidate the election results, including discussions about seizing voting machines and sending false letters to state officials about election fraud. He was also in the West Wing on Jan. 6, 2021, as Mr. Trump reacted to the violence at the Capitol, when his supporters attacked the building in his name.People close to Mr. Cipollone have repeatedly cautioned that concerns about executive privilege and attorney-client privilege could limit his cooperation.But committee negotiators have pressed to hear from Mr. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy in the White House.Mr. Cipollone will sit for a videotaped, transcribed interview, according to a person familiar with the discussions. He is not expected to testify publicly.A committee spokesman declined to comment.The panel’s push to hear from Mr. Cipollone intensified after the testimony last week of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide to the chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Ms. Hutchinson described detailed conversations with Mr. Cipollone in which she said the counsel had expressed deep concerns about the actions of Mr. Trump and Mr. Meadows.Some allies of Mr. Trump have privately tried to cast doubt on parts of Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, which was the committee’s most explosive to date and was delivered under oath. Mr. Trump has tried to invoke executive privilege — a president’s power to withhold the release of certain confidential communications with his advisers — to prevent his former aides from cooperating with the investigation. In April, Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin both appeared for informal interviews with the panel on a limited set of topics, according to an agreement reached by their representatives and representatives for Mr. Trump.The agreement, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times, allowed discussions of a meeting with Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official who tried to help Mr. Trump cling to power; Mr. Trump’s interactions with John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who drafted a legal strategy for overturning the election; any interactions with members of Congress; and Mr. Cipollone’s recollections of the events of Jan. 6.The agreement said that the two men could not discuss conversations they or others had with Mr. Trump, other than one discussion in the Oval Office with Mr. Clark in a pivotal meeting on Jan. 3, 2021.However, both were permitted to discuss the timeline of where they were, with whom they met and conversations they had on Jan. 6. Assuming those conditions hold for Mr. Cipollone’s forthcoming testimony, they would presumably cover conversations such as ones he may have had with Ms. Hutchinson or other officials that day.Ms. Hutchinson told the panel that she recalled that on Jan. 6, Mr. Cipollone had objected to suggestions that Mr. Trump join a crowd at the Capitol that was pressing to overturn the results of the election.“We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” Ms. Hutchinson recalled Mr. Cipollone saying.People familiar with the White House counsel’s schedule on Jan. 6, 2021, say he arrived late to the White House, although it was unclear precisely when.According to Ms. Hutchinson, Mr. Cipollone urged Mr. Meadows to do more to persuade Mr. Trump to call off the rioters. Ms. Hutchinson also told investigators that she heard lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office say a plan to put forward pro-Trump electors in states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won was not “legally sound.”Members of the House committee had hoped that Mr. Cipollone would testify publicly at a previous hearing, but he declined. They then took their case public. From the hearing room dais, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, singled out the former White House counsel by name, saying: “Our committee is certain that Donald Trump does not want Mr. Cipollone to testify here. But we think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally.”Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 7Making a case against Trump. More