Ali Vitali described what Jamie Raskin told her about the interview with White House counsel Pat Cipollone. He told her Cipollone has corroborated "almost everything that we had learned from the prior hearings. and he had clearly tried to talk President Trump down from his efforts to override the election.
"I mean, he had been, apparently, accepting and supportive of the lawsuits. There were eight hours of it. I was there for most of it, and I didn't hear him contradict any other witness. well, I certainly didn't hear him contradict Cassidy Hutchinson and, you know, I think he had an opportunity to say whatever he wanted to say. So I didn't see any contradiction there," Raskin said.
Cippolone's videotaped testimony will be part of today's hearing, Vitali said.
"His testimony is going to be critical, and it explains why he was so important. When you understand the focus that's going to be placed in today's hearing on that meeting on December 18th between external lawyers who were Trump allies, internal lawyers at the Trump White House, and Trump himself, this is how Raskin explained that meeting and why it is so important to today."
"We will tell the story after what has been called the craziest meeting in the Trump presidency, something that was not normal, that was hot-blooded, contentious, deranged," Raskin said.
"Basically, they had some last-minute Hail Mary desperation ploys they wanted to advance, including the military seizing the election machinery and appointing Sidney Powell as a roving special counsel with the power to prosecute people for imagined or real election offenses. This was opposed strongly by the White House counsel and by others on the White House staff. The meeting went for more than five hours.
"At the end of this contentious and strange meeting, that went to the wee hours of the night, Donald Trump apparently resolved to do what his final course of action was. He sent out, in the middle of the night, after 1 a.m., the tweet that would be heard around the world. That tweet asserted that there was no way he could have lost the election. There was definitive proof on it now. Then he said that there would be a big rally in Washington. 'Be there. It'll be wild.'"
