WASHINGTON — Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin are expected to appear Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed their scheduled appearances Thursday. The news was first reported by ABC News.
The grand jury subpoenaed Cipollone last month in connection with the Justice Department's investigation into then-President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the results of the last presidential election.
The probe is separate from the special grand jury investigation into efforts to interfere in the election in Fulton County, Georgia. Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani recently spent more than six hours at a courthouse in Atlanta to provide testimony before that grand jury, days after he was informed that he is a “target” of the criminal probe.
In July, Cipollone, considered a key witness from the Trump administration on the day of the riot and in the weeks leading up to it, cooperated with the House Jan. 6 committee's investigation. He testified behind closed doors for more than seven hours after the congressional panel subpoenaed him.
Members of the committee had ramped up pressure on Cipollone to answer questions after they heard bombshell testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson detailed Cipollone’s efforts to rein in Trump on Jan. 6 and the days preceding it.
During the panel’s eighth public hearing, the committee played parts of Cipollone's recorded testimony in which he said White House staff members wanted rioters to leave the Capitol that day. He suggested Trump did not.
In July, Attorney General Merrick Garland called the Justice Department's Jan. 6 probe the "most wide-ranging investigation in its history” in an interview with NBC News' Lester Holt. He also said the department plans to prosecute anyone who was “criminally responsible for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another.”
