WASHINGTON — Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone corroborated virtually all of the revelations from previous witnesses, including former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, in lengthy testimony before the panel last week, a top Jan. 6 committee member told NBC News.
“Cipollone has corroborated almost everything that we’ve learned from the prior hearings,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in an exclusive interview just hours before the next hearing. “I certainly did not hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson. … He had the opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say, so I didn’t see any contradiction there.”
Video clips of Cipollone’s taped testimony will be presented at Tuesday’s hearing, which Raskin will lead alongside Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., as the panel focuses on how the pro-Trump mob came together at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Raskin said the hearing will include new details about what committee members have been told was “the craziest meeting in the Trump presidency,” on Dec. 18, 2020, describing it as “hot-blooded, contentious, deranged” when the president met with outside and internal legal advisers for a “Hail Mary desperation ploy” to subvert an election they had lost, including possibly seizing state election machines and appointing Trump ally Sidney Powell as a special counsel.
The hearing, Raskin said, will bring viewers up to Jan. 6 in the committee’s timeline and set the stage for what he said feels like the “end of this main block of hearings.”
The committee initially planned to hold two hearings this week, but it changed course Monday by postponing the one scheduled for Thursday in prime time. That hearing, expected to be the finale to the half-dozen hearings so far, is now likely to be next week.
But Raskin was also cautious about putting an end date on the hearings.
“One thing I’ve learned over the course of the select committee is that we never say, ‘Finally, the research and investigation are over.’ Because we are continuing to learn astounding new things on a daily basis.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
