Trump White House counsel ‘corroborated almost everything’ learned in previous hearings, Jan. 6 panel member says
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, said in a new interview that former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone “corroborated almost everything” that the panel has learned in prior hearings.
Speaking to NBC News, Raskin noted that the corroboration included testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there,” he told the network.
Cipollone voluntarily appeared before the panel on Friday after he was subpoenaed.
The committee had subpoenaed him after Hutchinson testified during the panel’s last hearing that Cipollone told her on Jan. 6 that he did not want former President Trump to be taken to the Capitol that day and had later urged Meadows to act as the riot ensued.
Members of the committee have said that he did not contradict what other people had told the committee. The panel intends to play portions of Cipollone’s taped deposition during Tuesday’s hearing, according to NBC News.
The hearing is set to focus on a tweet that Trump sent out in December 2020 in which he noted a report that former aide Peter Navarro made alleging election fraud and said there would be a protest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
“People are going to hear the story of that tweet, and then the explosive effect it had in Trump World and specifically among the domestic violent extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country,” Raskin told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
