Panel issues subpoena to Cipollone, former White House counsel
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection issued a subpoena Wednesday to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who is said to have stridently warned against former President Donald Trump’s efforts to try to overturn his election loss.
It’s the first public step the committee has taken since receiving the public testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the onetime junior aide who accused Trump of knowing his supporters were armed on Jan. 6 and demanding that he be taken to the U.S. Capitol that day.
Cipollone, who was Trump’s top White House lawyer, is said to have raised concerns about the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. The committee said he could have information about efforts by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College, from organizing so-called alternate electors in states Biden won to trying to appoint as attorney general a loyalist who pushed false theories of voter fraud.
Cipollone has been placed in key moments after the election by Hutchinson as well as by former Justice Department lawyers.
Hutchinson said Cipollone warned prior to Jan. 6 that there would be “serious legal concerns” if Trump went to the Capitol with the protesters.
The morning of Jan. 6, she testified, Cipollone restated his concerns that if Trump did go to the Capitol to try to intervene in the certification of the election, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, said in their letter to Cipollone that while he had previously given the committee an “informal interview” on April 13, his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony made their subpoena necessary.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who sits on the committee, said last week that Cipollone told the committee he tried to intervene when he heard Trump was being advised by Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who wanted to push false claims of voter fraud.
Clark had drafted a letter for key swing states that was never sent but would have falsely claimed the department had discovered troubling irregularities in the election. Cipollone was quoted by one witness as having told Trump the letter was a “murder-suicide pact.”
Israeli leader won’t run:
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who led a broad but fragile coalition government that came unraveled barely a year after taking office, announced Wednesday that he will not run in upcoming elections.
Bennett’s government announced last week that it would dissolve the Knesset ahead of elections expected this fall, but the voting required for dissolution has been bogged down by disputes with the opposition.
“I strived as prime minister to care for all citizens, regardless of who they voted for,” he said in a brief primetime address.
Bennett’s office said he will continue to serve as alternate prime minister in a caretaker government to be led by Yair Lapid, the architect of the coalition who is currently foreign minister.
Migrant tragedies: A flimsy boat collapsed and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off
Libya’s coast, leaving at least 30 people including women and children missing and feared dead, an international charity said Wednesday.
The vessel sank in the deadly central Mediterranean Sea route, said Doctors Without Borders, also known by its abbreviation MSF for the French name of the group.
The missing migrants include five women and eight children, MSF said.
Libyan authorities also said Wednesday they found the bodies of 20 migrants who died around 75 miles from the border with Chad.
The Ambulance and Emergency Authority in the southeastern city of Kufra said the migrants were on their way from Chad when their vehicle broke down about 190 miles south of the city.
Energy lease auctions: The U.S. government this week is holding its first onshore oil and natural gas drilling lease auctions since President Joe Biden took office after
a federal court blocked the administration’s attempt to suspend such sales because of climate change worries.
The online auctions conclude Thursday. About 200 square miles of federal lands were offered for lease in eight western states.
A coalition of 10 environmental groups said in a lawsuit filed before the sales began that they were illegal because officials acknowledged the climate change impacts but proceeded anyway.
Biden suspended new leasing shortly after taking office in January 2021. A federal judge in Louisiana ordered the sales to resume, saying Interior officials had offered no “rational explanation” for canceling them and only Congress could do so.
Parnas sentenced: Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to 20 months in prison for fraud and
campaign finance crimes.
Parnas, 50, had sought leniency on grounds that he’d cooperated with the Congressional probe of Trump and his efforts to get Ukrainian leaders to investigate President Joe Biden’s son.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken didn’t give Parnas credit for that assistance, which came only after the Soviet-born businessman was facing criminal charges. Prosecutors had sought six years.
The judge also ordered Parnas to pay $2.3 million in restitution.
Mich. school shooting:
The parents of a teenager wounded in a mass shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan are suing the shop that sold the handgun used to kill four students and injure six others.
The complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Detroit on behalf of Matthew and Mary Mueller accuses Acme Shooting Goods LLC of negligently
or unlawfully supplying the gun through a straw sale.
Authorities have said James Crumbley bought the 9 mm semiautomatic handgun used in the Nov. 30 shooting as an early Christmas gift for his son, Ethan, who was 15 at the time.
The lawsuit says Ethan accompanied his father to Acme Shooting Goods several days before the shooting and “engaged in behavior or made one or more statements while in the store which further indicated that the Acme gun was intended for” Ethan.
Acme Shooting Goods was obligated to train, supervise and monitor employees to identify and prevent so-called straw purchases, according to the lawsuit. A straw purchase is when a person buys a gun to sell or give to someone prohibited from having one.
The Muellers’ son suffered gunshot wounds to a hand and his face in the incident at the school located about 30 miles north of Detroit.