| Резюме: | Pat Cipollone doesn’t seem like Donald Trump’s kind of fixer. His manner is unassuming. He hasn’t spent much time playing a lawyer in court or on TV. But the president has turned to Cipollone, his White House counsel, when it matters most — to lead his defense in his impeachment trial. Cipollone, 53, spent most of his career in commercial litigation and doesn’t have extensive experience with trials. The son of Italian immigrants, devout Catholic and father of 10 is more likely to be caught on the edge of a camera’s frame than behind the mic. “He’s the strong, silent type,” Trump said of Cipollone at a recent White House event marking the 150th judicial appointment of his presidency. The White House declined to make Cipollone as well as other administration officials available to comment for this story. In correspondence with House Democrats during the impeachment saga, Cipollone has shown a knack for channeling the president’s provocative rhetoric. Cipollone (pronounced SIP-uh-loan-ee) has forcefully defended Trump’s right to executive privilege and argued that congressional investigators have no right to question White House advisers about conversations with the president on withholding military aid from Ukraine. Democrats say Trump withheld the aid to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. One former GOP congressional attorney was so taken aback by the over-the-top tone of an eight-page letter that Cipollone sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October that he described the approach as “bananas.” In the letter, Cipollone flatly refused to allow White House cooperation with the House impeachment probe. Other critics say the letter deepened Democrats’ case that Trump had committed an abuse of power and obstructed justice in his pursuit of dirt on Biden. “Pat’s approach has essentially led to Article 2 (obstruction of justice) of the articles of impeachment,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel during the Obama administration and briefly worked with Cipollone at a law firm. “I suspect his style is driven by his client.” But Cipollone’s backers counter that he’s proven a capable defender of Trump’s view on executive power. “Pat Cipollone will be defending executive power from time to time during the Senate proceedings, which will be swimming upstream from certain segments of the media,” said Leonard Leo, a conservative attorney who has consulted with the Trump administration on judicial nominations and was among those who recommended Cipollone for the White House counsel post. “He has the courage and determination to make those points and not be cowed by whatever criticism there might be,” Leo said. “Those are the kind of attributes that brought him to the job. Those are the things that mattered to me when asked what I thought of him.” Yet, tapping the unassuming Cipollone is in some ways a departure for Trump, who over the years has turned to a series of flashy lawyers to help him get out of legal jams. Roy Cohn, of McCarthy-era infamy, fought the Justice Department on fair housing discrimination charges lodged against the Trump Organization in the 1970s. Michael Cohen, now serving a federal prison sentence for financial crimes committed while working on behalf of Trump, was an explosive defender of Trump and bought the silence of women who claimed that they once had affairs with the […]
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