[Dion]

Indictment shows White House lawyers struggling for control as Trump fought to overturn election

WASHINGTON (AP) — A few hours after rioters laid siege to the Capitol, overpowering police in a violent attack on the seat of American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, the White House’s top lawyer, Pat Cipollone, called his boss with an urgent message.

It’s time to end your objections to the 2020 election, Cipollone told Donald Trump, and allow Congress to certify Joe Biden as the next president. Trump refused.

Trump was no longer listening to his White House counsel, the elite team of attorneys who take an oath to serve the office of the president. But by all accounts, he hadn’t been listening to them for some time.

The extraordinary moment — fully detailed for the first time in the latest federal indictment against Trump unsealed last week — vividly illustrates the extent to which the former president's final weeks in office were consumed by a struggle over the law, with two determined groups of attorneys fighting it out as the future of American democracy hung in the balance.

Trump’s attempts to remain in power, according to the indictment and evidence compiled in congressional investigations, were firmly rejected by Cipollone and his top deputy, Pat Philbin. So Trump turned to outside allies including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, among other legal advisers, to launch what federal prosecutors have called a “criminal scheme” to fraudulently overturn the election.

Cipollone and Philbin had been heard from before, as both testified to the House Jan. 6 committee under subpoena. But they were unable to disclose to Congress their interactions with Trump, citing the executive privilege that customarily shields their work in the White House.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the indictment against Trump, faced no such barrier. A federal judge ruled the lawyers had to testify about their interactions with Trump in the chaotic weeks before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

As a result, prosecutors were able to obtain extraordinary new details that were used in the indictment of the former president. And Cipollone and Philbin seem likely to become important witnesses in Trump's upcoming trial.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/polit...11307566&ei=12