In Pat Cipollone, Trump finds a lawyer that he likes

During the 21 months of his stormy mandate in the White House, Don McGahn often said, half-mocking his colleagues: "It's a good week if I do not call the ring."

Pat Cipollone, McGahn's successor as a White House lawyer, does not adopt the same kind of humor at the gallows – if only because, as the Allies say , a good personal chemistry with his mercurial boss and his detractors is a willingness to allow him to do the same he managed to stay on the good side of a president who affectionately called him "Mr. Lawyer."

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In six months of work, Cipollone has turned the White House Board of Trustees into a central business center and is constantly establishing itself in the Oval Office. A 53-year-old corporate lawyer with an affable style, he also impressed Trump enough to say that the president had begun asking his aides to rate the best White House lawyer – a sign that Cipollone, at the very least, to the attention of his client.

"He has the ear of the president, he has earned the respect of the president and this allows the people of this building not only to survive, but also to succeed in doing their job," said Kellyanne Conway, senior advisor to the president .

Cipollone is not the type to attract attention – friends note that he is often on the edge of photographs, as if he was trying to get out of the frame. He is "a cordial but unscrupulous negotiator. You never know what he thinks, "said a former customer. "He should have been a professional poker player."

But it has been at the heart of controversy in the White House since the winter, since the creation of a legal way allowing the president to declare a national emergency on the southern border until the adaptation of the the White House's defiant approach to congressional investigations. More recently, Cipollone was among the personalities who told Trump that he could use his emergency powers to impose tariff restrictions in Mexico. He then helped Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo contribute to a last-minute deal to end the crisis. strong test.

The central role of the council office in policy making in the White House is normal, and Cipollone consulted with the predecessors of both parties before taking office. But given the abnormal nature of the Trump presidency, a legal advisor who shows the president the best way to achieve his goals – when many members of his own party are often alarmed by the goals themselves – has aroused worries even among the president's allies.

"One of the best ways to exercise restraint is to raise legal concerns or minimize the economic or political consequences of a decision," said a former White House official, who noted that McGahn often did so. , to the chagrin of the president.

Cipollone's traditional approach to work contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor, a grumpy electoral advocate who did not trust Trump and who focused almost exclusively on judicial appointments and deregulation . McGahn, who left in mid-October, frequently sent MPs to policy meetings and was rarely present when problems finally arrived at the president's office.

This has given accusing assistants who were lawyers such as former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter the opportunity to build disproportionate portfolios and assume some of the traditional legal responsibilities of the board office.

"With this president, it's not about the organization chart, but how close you are to the president. But Don did not care, said a White House official. "For Don, it was, I'm going to finish my judges and I'm not going to make friends in the process. I do not care if the president thinks I'm his man. "

A young lawyer in the 1990s, Cipollone served as a multi-faceted advisor and speechwriter at the Attorney General's office during the first appearance of Attorney General Bill Barr. Both share a broader vision of executive power – a position they believe is simply a reflection of the Constitution, but this critical accusation gives the president too much power. Cipollone expressed this view in a series of letters to congressional investigators – telling them, in fact, to pound the sand.

But while Barr is known to his friends as "The Buffalo" – stubborn, stubborn and immutable – Cipollone's pals describe someone a little more gentle and a little more humble.

Son of Italian immigrants, Cipollone grew up in the Bronx before attending the Fordham and Law Universities of the University of Chicago. He likes to tell his friends that his father, a factory worker, went to "UCLA University – Lexington Avenue Corner University," according to his friend and former colleague, Jonathan Missner , managing partner of the law firm Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner. Cipollone left to join the White House.

Father of 10 children, Cipollone is also a devout Catholic. He left the law firm Kirkland and Ellis to become General Counsel of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. Later, with Missner, he founded a charitable organization to strengthen ties between Catholics and Israel.

In Washington, Cipollone is part of what many conservative jurists call jokingly the "Catholic Mafia", a group of like-minded lawyers and co-religionists who have gained greater influence in the administration. Trump. Others include Barr, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Executive Director of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo, and Fox News host Laura Newsraham, who praised Cipollone – the godfather of one of her children – when she presented him several times. Talented lawyer "and a" pretty cool godfather. "

Ingraham recruited Cipollone to help Trump prepare the debate during the 2016 campaign, and the two men "just clicked," said his friend Thomas Yannucci, a partner at law firm Kirkland, and Ellis, who recruited Cipollone to join the firm. 1990s.

"He's doing this job because he's been supporting this president since the beginning," said a former client of Cipollone, pointing out that he was "one of the few to have said that he would win, even if bad polls at the exit of polling stations arrived on the evening of the election ".

He then interviewed for the position of Deputy Attorney General, a job that was assigned to Rod Rosenstein. But he helped prepare former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his confirmation hearings and stood out as a particularly effective inquisitor, according to a Sessions confidant.

The Democratic Party's seizure of the House of Representatives last November, which canceled any hope that the government would adopt another important bill before the 2020 elections, also made the council's office a renewed venue for action. , unleashing a series of democratic investigations on whether in the real estate field, whether in the field of real estate or in that of the obstruction of justice to the impact of its policy of separation of short duration.

"The battles we had in the first year were tax reform and health care. It was a lot of public policy, not a lot of legal stuff, "said Leo of the Federalist Society, who personally addressed the president this winter to recommend Cipollone to work. "The problems are now much more related to the assertion of executive power. Pat played a very important role in helping to frame these things. "

Unlike McGahn, who carefully avoided Mueller's investigation into his star witness, Cipollone's office dictated the course of the White House's legal strategy to refute Congressional investigations into Trump's administration. absorbed in Washington since mid-November.

For Democrats, Cipollone and his colleagues in the prosecutor's office, which now has about 40 lawyers out of a minimum of 25, are the facilitators of a president already reluctant to abide by the norms and traditions. Judiciary President Jerrold Nadler described the attempts by the president of the judiciary as "scandalous", "a joke," in the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and "a model of 39, obstruction growing, unprecedented and growing "by Supervisory President Elijah Cummings.

Others described Cipollone's strategy as the standard posture adopted by former White House lawyers who worked to block Congress in order to force disputes to appear in court. Most legal observers say that the stalemate between the two ends of Pennsylvania Ave. It will inevitably take months, if not years, to solve the problem – with the upcoming 2020 elections.

"White House advisers have generally followed a rather hostile approach to congressional investigations of White House staff. The Obama administration is one of the most hostile administrations in history, "said Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University. "Democrats stand out a bit like Claude Rains saying that they are" shocked, shocked "that a White House lawyer defies Congress." These same Democratic leaders have backed President Obama in his refusal systematic transmission of information to Congress. "

Cipollone and his investigative assistant, Michael Purpura, set out this point of view in a series of letters to Capitol Hill that largely invoked the argument that legislators have no legitimate legislative purpose. "to summon many of the documents they requested. . That's what Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says, who refused to hand over the president's tax returns, and one of the reasons Cipollone invoked when he stated that the White House would not comply with Nadler's summons to contribute to widespread corruption. probe.

The President's personal lawyers have taken the same line of action in the lawsuits against Deutsche Bank and Capital One, with the aim of preventing the disclosure of numerous financial documents related to Trump's activities, as well as against the law firm. accounting expertise of the president, Mazars. A district court judge dismissed the complaint in mid-May, arguing that Mazars was required to comply with Congressional summonses.

According to Turley, the White House hopes to settle the cases in court, perhaps through the 2020 presidential election, without necessarily winning. "They go well beyond the navigation tags of executive privilege. So, if they go to court, they must anticipate that they will lose, "he said. "The benefits of this strategy are magnified in this case as they are generally of the opinion that the House leadership wants to be left behind."

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The recovered power of Cipollone has raised concerns among critics of the Trump administration that the board office has an important role to play in tying the hands of an impulsive president who has sometimes failed to comply with constitutional requirements.

These critics say, in essence, that Cipollone treats the president too much like a normal customer. Rather than stifling some of the president's most controversial ideas, it is necessary to declare a national emergency on the southern border, to impose tariffs in Mexico or to restrict strongly use of fetal tissue in medical research, he found acceptable the legal remedies Trump follow.

Cipollone did not always endorse the president's efforts. For example, he cautioned against Trump's decision in late March to change the administration's position on the Affordable Care Act and support a lawsuit to overturn the entire law.

"In the law that I practiced with him, he said to the client," What is your goal? What is the best way to achieve this goal? And if you want an access ramp, let's take it now, do not take it in three years, "said Missner. "He has never imposed his views. But Pat is a pitbull. He will go and he will win. "