President Trump reportedly has selected Pat Cipollone to replace outgoing White House Counsel Don McGahn, though he has yet to make any official announcement about the role.
Cipollone, who practices commercial litigation at Stein Mitchell Cipollone Beato & Missner, is well liked and respected among Trump’s personal lawyers and had been informally advising them since at least June on the special-counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
The Post describes Cipollone as a "conservative Catholic activist and longtime Washington commercial lawyer."
Cipollone is expected to take over the premier legal office in the next week, pending a security clearance review. He would head up this office at a momentous and challenging time. The White House counsel’s team has been eviscerated by departures, having dwindled down to 25 lawyers from 35 earlier in the year. The office normally has a staff of 50 lawyers ...
The losses come at an inopportune time: The White House is bracing for a withering investigative assault from Congress if Democrats take control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections. The White House Counsel’s Office would be the key manager and defender of the administration in the expected flood of congressional investigations and subpoenas.
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According to the biography on his firm’s website, Cipollone has practiced in commercial litigation, trade regulation and health-care fraud. He has extensive expertise in defending corporations, as well as handling complex federal investigations and “prepublication negotiations” over defamatory media reports.
He is a former partner at the law firm Kirkland and Ellis, whose attorneys have included Kavanaugh, Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Paul Clement.
Cipollone is well regarded among some of Trump’s senior advisers, including the president’s outside attorneys, Jay Sekulow and Rudolph W. Giuliani. He became a familiar voice of counsel to Trump in the late summer, speaking with him by phone frequently.
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Another powerful connection the lawyer has to Trump is conservative commentator and Trump ally Laura Ingraham. Ingraham calls Cipollone her godfather, and she credited him as her “spiritual mentor” before she converted to Catholicism in 2002.
White House lawyer Emmet Flood, also at one point in the running to replace McGahn, will stay in his current role managing the special counsel investigation.