It was a decidedly unsplashy appointment for a president known for treating White House recruitment like a reality TV show — floating multiple candidate’s names and live reveals on Twitter.
When Pat Cipollone was made White House counsel last year, it sounded like an almost routine appointment. A former Justice Department lawyer, he came with executive experience and with a reputation built as a veteran litigator at Washington firms. He wasn’t a news channel talking head, a political operator, or a showy donor.
The most notable thing about the devout Catholic was his 10 children, as several profiles noted.
But the impeachment inquiry and the White House response show why President Trump picked him. Cipollone, 53, has come out punching, accusing Democrats of waging an unconstitutional war on the president.
His October 8 letter to House Democratic leaders setting out his objections to the impeachment inquiry built a wall of noncooperation to shield Trump from more questions about his relations with the president of Ukraine or any other world leaders. It accused them of a “partisan and unconstitutional” inquiry and laid out the sort of broad-brush definition of “executive privilege” that would protect almost every aspect of presidential conduct — if his conclusions can survive a legal challenge.
For Cipollone’s former colleagues, this approach was no surprise coming as it did from a lawyer who admitted to having two methods.
By his assessment, he is either a Department of State or a Department of War guy. Either a negotiator and a dealmaker or, when the first approach fails, neither.
Before taking up the job, Cipollone practiced in commercial litigation, trade regulation, and healthcare fraud. He is a former partner at Kirkland and Ellis, a law firm where the attorneys have included Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, former independent counsel Ken Starr, and Judge Robert Bork.
He was no slouch. His financial disclosure report revealed an income of $6.7 million in the year before taking office.
At the same time, he was politically well connected, close to Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s outside attorneys, and Emmet Flood, who spearheaded the response to the Mueller investigation.
He also worked at the Department of Justice for Attorney General William Barr, serving as the counsel for communications and special projects during Barr’s first turn as attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.
“A lawyer’s lawyer” is how Barr described him when Cipollone landed at the White House last year. Insiders say they share a broad interpretation of executive privilege that gives the commander in chief wide latitude to act as he sees fit.
It was another Trump connection that led Cipollone to the White House. He has a long-standing friendship, forged in faith, with Laura Ingraham. His daughter worked for her at Fox News as a booker, a sign of their close connection. Ingraham credits him with introducing her to Catholicism in 2003 and even refers to him in interviews as her “godfather” and “spiritual mentor.”
Even if he was never known as a political operator, their relationship catapulted him to the heart of Trumpworld. Ingraham and the President may have since drifted apart over delays to his much-heralded border wall, but she was reportedly the one to recommend Cipollone to Trump to help in debate preparation during the 2016 campaign.
By all accounts, they clicked. “That’s what matters in this White House,” said a former administration official. “It’s about that connection.”
That connection is a positive for a president who is struggling to build the legal team he wants to fight impeachment. The problems were on public display earlier this month, when the president tried and ultimately failed to recruit Trey Gowdy, the former South Carolina congressman best known for his dogged pursuit of Hillary Clinton, to be his outside counsel. On that occasion, he may have been thwarted by lobbying regulations, but there remains a deeper problem.
“He’s a bad client — he doesn’t pay, and he doesn’t listen,” said one senior administration official describing the stumbling block.
But for now, all the signs are that the president has the lawyer he wants inside the White House.
