Cipollone: ‘I don’t think I don’t think any of these people were providing the President with good advice’
Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel to President Donald Trump, walks through a hallway during a break from a meeting with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, in O’Neill House Office Building in Washington, July 8, 2022.
Sarah Silbiger | Reuters
Cipollone described his displeasure at learning that a group of leading election fraud conspiracy theorists was meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, without any White House staff being present, on Dec. 18, 2020.
“I opened the doors and walked in, I saw Gen. [Michael] Flynn, Sidney Powell sitting there,” Cipollone said in his videotaped testimony. “I was not happy to see the people who 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 disintegrated into participants shouting at and insulting each other as Cipollone and other staff challenged Powell and the others to produce evidence of election fraud, attendees testified.
“I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice, so I didn’t understand how they had gotten in,” Cipollone said.
— Dan Mangan
‘The west wing is UNHINGED,’ Hutchinson texts during White House clash over election
An evidence document is shown on a screen during a full committee hearing on “the January 6th Investigation,” on Capitol Hill on July 12, 2022, in Washington, DC.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
A top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote that things had become unhinged as Trump’s allies clashed with administration officials in a mid-December meeting on his 2020 election loss.
Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn advocated for Trump to take drastic actions to try to overturn his loss to Biden.
They met fierce resistance from Cipollone, White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and others in an hourslong meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, that featured bitter argument, screaming and insults, according to witnesses.
Hutchinson texted another White House aide, Tony Ornato, “the west wing is UNHINGED.”
— Kevin Breuninger
Trump considered naming Sidney Powell as a “special counsel” to investigate alleged election crimes
A video featuring Sidney Powell, President Trump’s Campaign Attorney, is played during the fifth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building on June 23, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Trump had an executive order drawn up that would have directed the Pentagon to seize voting machines and installed Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate election-related crimes.
“As you can see here, this proposed order directs the Secretary of Defense to cease voting machines, quote, effective immediately, but it goes even further than that,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, who showed a copy of the Dec. 16, 2020 proposed order. “Under the order, President Trump would appoint a special counsel with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with all resources necessary to carry out her duties.”
Raskin said Powell “spent the post election period making outlandish claims about Venezuelan and Chinese interference in the election.”
– John Rosevear
Eugene Scalia, son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, told Donald Trump the 2020 election was 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., on 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.
The committee played testimony on Tuesday of Scalia telling committee investigators that…
Read More: Live coverage and latest updates day 7