Cipollone: ”I don’t think any of these people gave good advice to the president”
Pat Cipollone, a former White House adviser to President Donald Trump, walks through a hallway during a break from a meeting with the Special Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol, at the O’Neill House office building in Washington, 8 July 2022
Sarah Silbiger | Reuters
Cipollone described his dismay at learning that a group of leading election fraud conspiracy theorists were meeting with Trump in the Oval Office without White House staff present, on December 18, 2020.
“I opened the doors and went in, I saw gen. [Michael] Flynn, Sidney Powell sitting there,” Cipollone said in his videotaped testimony. “I wasn’t happy to see the people that were in the Oval Office.”
In addition to those two, Cipollone saw former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne at the meeting, whom he did not recognize. The session soon broke down into participants yelling and insulting each other as Cipollone and other officials challenged Powell and the others to present evidence of election fraud, attendees testified.
“I don’t think any of these people gave good advice to the president, so I don’t understand how they got in,” Cipollone said.
— Dan Mangan
“The West Wing is OUT,” Hutchinson wrote during the White House election showdown
An evidentiary document is shown on screen during a full committee hearing on the ‘January 6 investigation’ on Capitol Hill on July 12, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Sol Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
A top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote that things got shaky as Trump allies clashed with administration officials in a mid-December meeting about his 2020 election loss.
Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn advocated for Trump to take drastic action to try to reverse his loss to Biden.
They met fierce resistance from Cipollone, White House counsel Eric Hershman and others in an hours-long meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, that included a bitter argument, yelling and insults, according to witnesses.
Hutchinson texted another White House aide, Tony Ornato, that “the West Wing is UNBREAKABLE.”
— Kevin Breuninger
Trump considers appointing Sidney Powell as ‘special counsel’ to investigate alleged election crimes
A video clip featuring Sidney Powell, a lawyer for President Trump’s campaign, plays during the fifth House hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol at the Cannon House office building on June 23, 2022 in Washington, DC .
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Trump had an executive order drafted that would have ordered the Pentagon to seize voting machines and appointed Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate election-related crimes.
“As you can see here, this proposed order directs the Secretary of Defense to shut down the voting machines, quote, effective immediately, but it goes even further than that,” said Congressman Jamie Raskin, MD, who showed a copy on December 16, 2020 Proposed Order “Under the order, President Trump would appoint a special prosecutor with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with whatever resources are necessary to carry out his duties.”
Raskin said Powell “has spent the post-election period making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese election meddling.”
– John Rosevear
Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, told Donald Trump the 2020 election is over
Eugene Scalia, U.S. Secretary of Labor, speaks during a White House coronavirus task force briefing at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., U.S., Wednesday, July 8, 2020.
Joshua Roberts | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who is also the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said he told Trump the election was over.
On Tuesday, the committee played testimony from Scalia, who told committee investigators that he called Trump in mid-December and tried to encourage him to recognize that Joe Biden was the duly elected president.
“I called the president, we spoke on the 14th, in which I conveyed to him that I think it’s time for him to recognize that President Biden won the election,” Scalia said.
Trump will continue to make false claims about stealing the election, including on January 6, 2021, in the buildup to Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol.
– Brian Schwartz
Cipollone: ”I agree” that there is no evidence of election fraud
A former White House adviser during a Jan. 6 committee interview.
Courtesy: Special Congressional Committee on January 6
In the first video to be shown of his long-sought testimony last week, Cipollone said he agreed there was no evidence of widespread election fraud that could overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The clip shows Cipollone being asked by an investigator whether he agrees with the conclusion reached by other former Trump officials, including former Attorney General William Barr, that “there is no evidence of election fraud sufficient to undermine the outcome in a particular state.”
“Yes, I agree with that,” replied Cipollone.
In another clip, Cipollone said he thinks Trump should recognize the election.
He noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor in mid-December that the election process was over. “That would be consistent with my thinking about these things,” Cipollone told the committee.
— Kevin Breuninger
“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He’s not an impressionable kid,” Cheney snapped
U.S. Representative Liz Cheney speaks at the opening of a hearing on the ‘January 6 investigation’ on Capitol Hill on July 12, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Sol Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Cheney derided what he said was a “new strategy” to accuse Trump’s lawyers and others of pushing false claims of election fraud into the 2020 race instead of holding him accountable for that narrative.
“The strategy is to blame people that his advisers call ‘crazy’ for what Donald Trump has done,” Cheney said. “This new strategy is to try to blame only John Eastman or Sidney Powell or Congressman Scott Perry or others, not President Trump.”
Cheney said it was “nonsense.”
“President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child,” she said.
Former US President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in support of Republican candidates Adam Laxalt and Joe Lombardo (not pictured) on July 8, 2022 in Las Vegas.
Rhonda Churchill | AFP | Getty Images
“Like anyone else in this country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices,” Cheney said.
– Dan Mangan
Cipollone’s testimony “met our expectations,” Cheney says
Congressman Liz Cheney (R-WY), Vice Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, delivers remarks during the seventh hearing on the January 6 investigation at the Cannon House Office Building on July 12, 2022 .Washington.
Kevin Deitch | Getty Images
Select Committee Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said the former White House adviser’s closed-door testimony last week “met our expectations.”
Cipollone, a wanted witness who testified under subpoena for hours Friday, is expected to feature prominently in the hearing.
Cipollone’s actions before and during January 6 were mentioned by multiple witnesses, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
— Kevin Breuninger
Trump encouraged the crowd to “launch a violent attack on our democracy,” Thompson said
Missouri Democratic Congressional candidate Cory Bush votes on August 4, 2020 at Gambrinus Hall in St. Louis, Missouri.
Michael B. Thomas | Getty Images
Select Committee Chairman Benny Thompson, Md., said today’s hearing will demonstrate how Trump has “convened a mob” in Washington and “ultimately encouraged that mob to launch a violent attack on our democracy.”
Thompson began the hearing by explaining some basic principles of American elections: differences of opinion must be resolved at the ballot box, and force, harassment and intimidation are unacceptable.
Since Trump lost the 2020 election, he had to say, “We tried our best, but we didn’t make it,” Thompson said. — He went the other way.
— Kevin Breuninger
Trump lashed out at the committee before the hearing
Former US President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in support of Republican candidates Adam Laxalt and Joe Lombardo (not pictured) on July 8, 2022 in Las Vegas.
Rhonda Churchill | AFP | Getty Images
On Tuesday morning, Trump lashed out at the select committee in a series of posts on his social media platform, calling the investigators “lunatics” and attacking one of the star witnesses as a “con woman.”
The former president, who now posts on Truth Social after being permanently banned from Twitter following last year’s Capitol riot, has once again spread false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him through widespread fraud. These false allegations of fraud prompted many of Trump’s supporters to come to the Capitol on January 6.
Trump also claimed that key witness Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony had been “largely debunked” — although Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told NBC News that recent testimony by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone did not contradict of Hutchinson.
Trump disputed Hutchinson’s testimony that a White House aide told her that Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent after being told his security would not drive him to the US Capitol on January 6.
In between volleys at the select committee, Trump posted his congratulations to retired professional Jack Nicklaus for receiving an award in Scotland.
— Kevin Breuninger
The former spokesman for the Oath Keepers will appear as a witness
Jason Van Tattenhove, a member of the Oath Keepers, puts on camouflage paint during tactical training in western Montana, US, April 30, 2016.
Jim Urukart | Reuters
To shine a light on far-right extremist organizations conspiring to attack…
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