Pat Cipollone is winning over his boss. Critics say it's because he's too deferential to the president
During the 21 months of Don McGahn’s stormy tenure at the White House, he would often tell colleagues, half joking: “It’s a good week if I don’t get called into the Oval.”
Cipollone is not one to seek attention — friends note that he is often found on the edge of photographs, as if he were seeking to step outside the frame. He is “a cordial but cut-throat negotiator. You never know what he’s thinking,” said a former client. “He should have been a professional poker player.”Sign Up
The centrality of the counsel’s office in White House policymaking is normal, and Cipollone consulted with predecessors in both parties before taking the job. But given the abnormal nature of the Trump presidency, a legal adviser who shows the president the best way to accomplish his goals — when many in his own party are often alarmed by the goals themselves — has raised concerns, even among some of the president’s allies.
That gave hard-charging aides who happened to be lawyers like the former White House staff secretary, Rob Porter, an opportunity to build outsized portfolios and assume some of the traditional legal responsibilities of the counsel’s office. As a young lawyer in the 1990s, Cipollone worked as an all-purpose adviser and speechwriter in the attorney general’s office during Attorney General Bill Barr’s first stint on the job. The two share an expansive view of executive authority — one they say is simply a reflection of the Constitution, but that critics charge gives the president too much power. Cipollone has expressed that view in a series of letters to congressional investigators — telling them, in effect, to pound sand.
The father of 10 children, Cipollone is also a devout Catholic. He left the tony law firm Kirkland and Ellis to serve as general council of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. Later, he founded, along with Missner, a charity to strengthen ties between Catholics and Israel.
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