12 October 19
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Marc Ash
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12 October 19
Bob Bauer, Lawfare
Bauer writes: "White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's letter to the House leadership, declaring that the president will not cooperate in any impeachment inquiry, is an extraordinary document in more than one respect."
As White House counsel, Cipollone would have been justified in advising the House generally of the president’s position that he neither violated the law nor committed an impeachable offense. Yet he does more, launching a defense on the merits based on a selective statement and treatment of the facts and presenting arguments that are either irrelevant (the Justice Department’s declination of the campaign finance charge) or bizarre (the view of the issue expressed by the president of Ukraine).
Cipollone does not leave things there. He takes the additional step of declaring that the House has initiated the impeachment inquiry in order to “overturn the results of the 2016 election” and to “influence the next election” (emphasis in the original). This is an appalling bit of political rhetoric for a communication from the White House counsel to the House leadership. It is not a constitutional argument, nor is it a legal argument. It is the stuff of Trump tweets and Republican National Committee press releases and talking points.
White House counsels are not generally immune to the president’s political imperatives, but their primary job is one of supporting the Office of the President with sound legal advice. That advice may well be situated in, and informed by, the intense politics of a particular matter. But the counsel, while mindful of those pressures, must remain in control of them. The Cipollone letter is not a controlled performance.
Instead the letter is further evidence of the deterioration of norms in the conduct of senior government positions. The president and the White House officials around Cipollone may be convinced that the president is the target of a political conspiracy concocted by adversaries within the “deep state.” They may believe that they should not be shackled by norms that those supposedly determined to bring down this presidency are not observing. Yet it is up to the White House counsel to keep cool and maintain some distance from the political free-for-all, defending at least the norms relevant to the discharge of his duties. If the president demanded that an aggressive letter be sent to Congress, there were others to whom the task could have been delegated and who could have served as signatories.
