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After Pelosi became House Speaker the first week of January, the threat of congressional investigators bearing down on Trump became real. Democratic committee chairmen were readying a vast array of probes, from Trump’s efforts to thwart the Russia investigation and his secret communications with Vladimir Putin to the president’s tax returns and bank records to alleged abuse in the White House security clearance process and the separation of migrant children from their families at the border.
It fell to Cipollone to captain the administration’s defense. The conservative former Kirkland & Ellis partner, who was then working at a boutique plaintiffs’ firm, had several “ins” to Trump’s orbit. He had gotten to know Trump by privately advising the president’s legal strategy since the summer of 2018, and Jay Sekulow found his assistance invaluable. The Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who had been close to Trump for years, also recommended Cipollone; they became close friends when Cipollone helped her through a time of personal struggle over her faith.
Cipollone had another great calling card: he was a genuine fan of Trump’s policies and was determined to help advance his legislative agenda and put more of Trump’s aspirations into the “win” column.
Despite Cipollone’s conservatism, he had friends and admirers across the aisle, too. His former coworkers said he had a comfortable, genial style and put people around him quickly at ease. In his cases, he tried to find compromises to move forward. Melanie Sloan, a Trump critic and prominent government ethics lawyer, applauded Trump’s choice. She noted that Cipollone had a moral code and predicted that he would be unlikely to cross ethical boundaries in service to the president, despite Trump’s frequent demands of advisers to do so.
“He will advocate for his client quite zealously, but within the confines of the law,” Sloan said. She added, “It’s hard for me to imagine Pat doing something that would harm his reputation. He has a pretty strong core.”
Cipollone officially joined the office in November and spent the next couple of months repopulating the White House counsel’s office with warrior-lawyers in anticipation of a drawn-out battle with House Democrats over investigations. With McGahn’s departure in October, four of the five deputy White House counsels had left, and by late that year the number of lawyers on staff had dwindled to fewer than twenty from thirty-five. This shrinkage had eroded the ability of the White House to vet policies and personnel and left the administration ill-prepared for the looming oversight fight, but the silver lining for Cipollone was that he had a clean slate to build from.
By the beginning of January, Cipollone had hired seventeen lawyers, including three new deputies he had handpicked: Patrick Philbin, Kate Comerford Todd, and Mike Purpura. They joined John Eisenberg, a deputy since Trump took office. Each of the three newcomers possessed considerable experience working in the George W. Bush administration, either in the White House counsel’s office or in the Justice Department. They were well versed in executive privilege, the legal topic that Cipollone planned to deploy as both a protective tool and a cudgel in fending off the prying demands of Democratic lawmakers.
Cipollone and his team crafted Trump’s executive privilege strategy as a means of fending off the expected blizzard of requests from Democratic lawmakers and to protect the confidentiality of the office of the president.
The lawyers were prepared to make a robust argument that White House communications must remain shielded in order for the president to receive full and frank advice from his aides and advisers. They also anticipated blocking congressional subpoenas for testimony from scores of current and former administration officials, citing executive privilege.
Meanwhile, Barr was preparing to assume control of the Mueller investigation. Barr’s reputation, forged during his first tour as attorney general under President George H. W. Bush, was that of a devoted institutionalist who cared deeply about protecting Justice Department norms and rising above petty political gamesmanship. The Senate had unanimously approved his nominations for all three of his past Justice Department jobs, a fact Barr quietly reminded friends of. But it was clear to any student of the modern era that his confirmation process to become Trump’s attorney general would not be so smooth and that the outcome would not be unanimous.
In early January, as he prepared for his Senate confirmation hearings, Barr spent considerable time thinking through what, at least in the near term, his No. 1 job was: handling the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation and the release of his expected report. He closely read the special counsel’s stated mission and underlying statutes, as well as the Justice Department opinions that constrained how prosecutors could treat the president in an investigation.
Barr assumed Mueller and his team would write some sort of report at the end of their investigation but had not spoken to the special counsel and did not know what form it would take. The special counsel regulations called for the findings to be delivered to the attorney general but did not require a public report. Rod Rosenstein’s plan had long been to keep any such report private; at most, the Justice Department would make a public announcement that a confidential report had been delivered and the special counsel’s office was being disbanded. But over time, the idea of keeping the report private seemed impractical. Rosenstein’s deputies would joke about the furor it could cause, not only in the media, but also at the Capitol and the White House. “From which side of Pennsylvania Avenue would the pitchforks penetrate the building?” one quipped.
As Barr met privately with dozens of senators, courtesy calls in the run-up to his confirmation hearings, most of them were adamant that Mueller’s findings become public. He decided then that he would have to release the report; by withholding it, the Justice Department could look as if it were hiding something. He rationalized that if it documented criminal wrongdoing, the attorney general couldn’t sit on it, and if the president didn’t do anything wrong, the attorney general ought to tell the American people. More than a year and a half into Mueller’s investigation, the body politic needed a cathartic moment. And even if the department didn’t release the report, Barr assumed someone would leak it eventually.
At his January 15 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barr testified, “The country needs a credible resolution of these issues. If confirmed, I will not permit partisan politics, personal interests, or any other improper consideration to interfere with this or any other investigation. I will follow the special counsel regulations scrupulously and in good faith, and on my watch, Bob will be allowed to complete his work. Second, I also believe it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the special counsel’s work. For that reason, my goal will be to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law.”
Though he could not control the timetable for his confirmation, Barr fully expected Mueller’s final decisions and report to land in his lap, as opposed to that of the department’s interim caretaker, Matt Whitaker. Whitaker’s brief tenure as acting attorney general was not kind to his reputation. He had a frosty relationship with some of the most senior officials in the department, leading to paralysis at times. He suspected colleagues were leaking damaging material about him to reporters. Whitaker craved public adoration, and those who worked with him sensed in him a deep insecurity. He was quiet in internal meetings, striking some attendees as more of an observer than a decision maker. A few administration lawyers shared a private joke about Whitaker, saying he reminded them of the character Mongo from the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles.