The January 6 committee publicly presents only what it wants you to hear, not everything it is learning.
The January 6 committee publicly presents only what it wants you to hear, not everything it is learning.
L ast Friday’s videotaped deposition of Pat Cipollone, former Trump White House counsel, illustrates some of the worst elements of the House January 6 committee’s so-called investigation of the Capitol riot, at least if the New York Times’ reporting is to be believed.
The pressure the committee put on Cipollone to testify was ratcheted up after the appearance of Cassidy Hutchinson, former principal aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, at a June 28 session. Cipollone had already given the committee an informal interview. Obviously, then, the committee’s ardor to acquire additional information from Cipollone was driven by expectations that he could confirm Hutchinson’s explosive account, which portrayed Cipollone as a central figure — mainly, in pushing back against then-president Donald Trump’s malfeasance. So a major question is: Did Cipollone corroborate Hutchinson’s account?
This is hard to gauge from the Times report, in part because the committee is playing games, and in part because reporters Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman — perhaps because of the committee’s legerdemain — seem confused about the concept of corroboration.
Here’s the Times: “The panel did not press [Cipollone] to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson.”
Also the Times: Committee “investigators focused mainly on Mr. Cipollone’s views on the events of Jan. 6 and generally did not ask about his views of other witnesses’ accounts.”
And this: Committee spokesman Tim Mulvey said of Cipollone’s interview that “the testimony also corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.”
And finally: Committee member Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.) “said Mr. Cipollone did not contradict other witnesses.”
It is nigh impossible to follow this. The report seems to say that the committee both did and did not try to corroborate Hutchinson’s account through Cipollone. In addition, Representative Lofgren thinks you should know that Cipollone “did not contradict” other witnesses (presumably including Hutchinson), but the Times caveats that the panel neither pressed him to contradict other witnesses nor asked him about “his views of other witnesses’ accounts.”
The gamesmanship is dizzying.
Let’s start with what “corroboration” is. To corroborate a person’s testimony is simply to support it with independent evidence (i.e., evidence separate from that person’s own testimony). To contradict a person’s account is essentially the opposite of corroborating it; contradiction can happen when an investigator tries to corroborate (or verify) a person’s story and ends up developing independent evidence indicating that the story is wrong.
The Times implies that one way to corroborate or contradict testimony is by asking a witness “his views of other witnesses’ accounts.” Any good investigator would tell you that would be the worst way to go about it.
Let’s say an investigator tells Witness A, “Witness B told us Andy robbed the bank while you were there. Is that how you remember it?” From this, A can infer that he is not merely being asked what happened at the bank but that his answer could frame B as a liar; or it could frame A himself as a liar if the investigators are obviously biased in favor of B’s story.
No competent investigator goes about things that way. If you are trying to get at the truth, you ask the witness whether he was at the bank and, if so, what he observed. After you have gotten the witness’s version of events, it is up to you, the investigator, to evaluate how that account matches up, or doesn’t, with independent evidence derived from the testimony of other witnesses, documents, surveillance video, etc. You never corrupt a witness’s account by telling him what other witnesses have said; you want to know what a witness knows based on his own perception of events, not influenced by what he’s heard from or about other people’s testimonies.
Now, back to Cipollone. If the committee was really trying to find out what happened in the White House prior to and during the Capitol riot, it would just ask Cipollone what he saw and heard. Committee investigators would not ask Cipollone whether Hutchinson’s version of events was accurate. Cipollone’s job, like Hutchinson’s, is just to answer questions truthfully and relate his own observations to the best of his recollection. If his account diverges from hers, or from that of other witnesses, it is up to the investigator to figure out why. At least as often as not, the investigator concludes that different witnesses had different perspectives on things, or that one’s memory is better than another’s; inconsistencies are normal and do not necessarily signal that someone is lying.
But the January 6 committee is not conducting an investigation. It is crafting a story. Here’s a telling excerpt from the Times report (my italics):
Mr. Cipollone’s agreement to sit for an interview before the panel had prompted speculation that his testimony could either buttress or contradict the account of Ms. Hutchinson, who attributed some of the most damning statements about Mr. Trump’s behavior to Mr. Cipollone. For instance, she testified that Mr. Cipollone told her on the morning of Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump’s plan to accompany the mob to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”
Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone’s actions that day said he did not recall making that comment to Ms. Hutchinson. Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked. He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to people familiar with the questions.
See the game here? The committee’s uniformly anti-Trump members are very happy with Hutchinson’s claim, because they can use it to argue that Cipollone, Trump’s top legal adviser, believed Trump’s intentions were criminal. They do not want that testimony contradicted. So while the lawyers were negotiating over Cipollone’s appearance, the committee’s lawyers inquired of Cipollone’s lawyers whether, if asked, he would confirm Hutchinson’s account. Cipollone’s lawyers signaled that he would not. Armed with that information, the committee decided not to ask Cipollone about it.
Banking on the apparent belief that most people are morons, Mulvey, the committee spokesman, said two contradictory things. First (and to repeat), he claimed that Cipollone had “corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.” That is, the committee knows that the public views as very significant the question of whether Cipollone verified the things Hutchinson said, and thus expects that, after pressuring Cipollone into testifying, the committee must have asked him about the crucial aspects of Hutchinson’s testimony that Cipollone was in a position to corroborate or contradict. Knowing the public’s expectations, the committee duplicitously announced that Cipollone corroborated Hutchinson even though the committee had studiously avoided asking Cipollone for testimony that would contradict her.
Second, after Donald Trump Jr. complained on Twitter about reports that the committee had gone out of its way to prevent Cipollone from contradicting Hutchinson, Mulvey indignantly told the Times that “there was no ‘preinterview agreement to limit Cipollone’s testimony’ and any suggestion otherwise was ‘completely false.’”
This insults our intelligence. No one claimed there was a formal “preinterview agreement” limiting the subject matter of Cipollone’s testimony. The claim is that, in the give-and-take between lawyers before the heavily negotiated interview, in the nod-and-a-wink way in which this is done, the committee’s lawyers took pains to find out whether Cipollone’s lawyers believed their client would corroborate certain critical details of Hutchinson’s account. When Cipollone’s lawyers indicated that he would not corroborate her, the committee’s lawyers made sure that the committee’s investigators were made aware to this. Based on that heads-up, committee investigators (presumably working with Representative Lofgren and one or more other committee members) avoided asking Cipollone about these details during the Friday interview.
With no cross-examination permitted, and committee membership limited to only House members who want Trump prosecuted, the record will thus stand with Hutchinson’s unrebutted hearsay account of what Cipollone said and believed on a crucial matter. Cipollone, the witness whose account actually matters on the issue of what he, as the president’s top legal adviser, believed, would have contradicted Hutchinson. That would have advanced the investigation, but it would have harmed the political narrative. The latter is what counts to this committee, so the panel consciously avoided its duty to get the relevant testimony from the most relevant witness.
This really is kangaroo-court stuff. But it’s no surprise. The committee publicly presents only what it wants you to hear, not everything it is learning — or labors to avoid learning.
Recall that Hutchinson’s testimony famously included her hearsay account of a physical altercation between Trump and Secret Service agents. She didn’t see the supposed skirmish, but it was sensational, so the committee adduced her story anyway. Then came public reports that the agents involved denied both that it happened and that Hutchinson had been told that it happened. It also emerged that the committee had access to these witnesses before interviewing Hutchinson. Not only did the committee never ask the agents about whether there had been a physical altercation with Trump; committee investigators also failed to go back to reinterview them about it — that is, the committee didn’t give them a chance to contradict Hutchinson before presenting her hearsay story publicly. And although the committee claimed it would be happy to take testimony on the matter from the reportedly contradictory agents, it did not commit to presenting such testimony publicly or to releasing transcripts of the prior testimony. And, by the way, the committee has not announced whether it has scheduled additional testimony from those agents (at least to my knowledge, and I note that, on July 1, the Washington Post reported that the Secret Service agents had not been reinterviewed since Hutchinson’s public appearance).
The Times further reports (my italics):
The panel recorded Mr. Cipollone on video with potential plans to use clips of his testimony at upcoming hearings. Aides have begun strategizing about whether and where to adjust scripts to include key clips, one person said. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
Yes, the “scripts” for episode seven of this season’s summertime drama must be “adjusted.” Nothing like a totally trustworthy, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may, professional investigation, right?