House Democrats’ impeachment trial managers on Tuesday declared that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone is a “fact witness” in the trial and demanded he discloses all information he knows about President Trump’s action related to the impeachment charges.
The Democrats said Mr. Cipollone, who is a key member of Mr. Trump’s defense team at the impeachment trial, had first-hand knowledge of events related to the president’s alleged abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
They said Mr. Cipollone’s potential conflict of interest could be severe enough to require his disqualification from representing the president at the trial.
“In preparation for the trial of Donald J. Trump before the Senate, we write to notify you that evidence received by the House of Representatives during its impeachment inquiry indicates that you are a material witness to the charges in both Articles of Impeachment for which President Trump now faces trial,” they wrote in a letter to the White House.
They said Mr. Cipollone was involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election and to cover it up by blocking Congress’ access to administration officials and documents for the impeachment inquiry.
“Evidence indicates that, at a minimum, you have detailed knowledge of the facts regarding the first Article and played an instrumental role in the conduct charged in the second Article. The ethical rules generally preclude a lawyer from acting as an advocate at a trial in which he is likely also a necessary witness,” wrote the impeachment managers.
The latter added, “Even if the advocate does not take the witness stand, his status as an unsworn witness risks seriously damaging the fairness of the trial.”
The demands, laid out by the seven impeachment managers in the letter, provided a glimpse of the finger-pointing expected to dominate the impeachment trial.
Mr. Trump’s defense team made a similar claim regarding Rep. Adam B. Schiff, one of the impeachment managers who spearheaded the impeachment and has ties to the White House whistleblower who initiated the impeachment effort.
The White House team said Mr. Schiff, California Democrat, was a fact witness and questioned his role in the trial.
The two sides also accuse each other of abusing political power to affect the 2020 election.
The impeachment articles charge Mr. Trump with using his power to prod Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, a top contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, as well as Ukraine’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
They say these efforts were intended to help Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign.
The White House countered in a brief for the impeachment trial that the impeachment itself is an abuse of power by House Democrats aimed at wounding Mr. Trump’s reelection bid.
The impeachment of Mr. Trump stemmed from a July 25 phone call in which he pressed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for a “favor” in investigating Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, who landed a lucrative job on the board of Ukraine gas company Burisma Holdings while his father led Obama administration diplomacy in that graft-riddled country.
A whistleblower, who is believed to be a CIA official assigned to the White House, accused the president of abusing his power on the call, including withholding $391 million of U.S. military aid from Ukraine as leverage.
The whistleblower, whose alleged identity is widely discussed in Washington circles but whose name is being withheld by The Washington Times, has ties to the Democratic Party and the elder Mr. Biden. The whistleblower also met with Mr. Schiff’s staff for guidance before making the complaint.
Mr. Trump has acknowledged that he wanted an investigation into alleged corruption involving the Bidens and Ukraine interference in the 2016 election.
Interest increased in Mr. Biden’s actions in Ukraine after he boasted last year of forcing Ukraine to fire the country’s chief prosecutor in spring 2016. He said threatened to block a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee. The prosecutor was widely viewed as not doing enough to combat corruption. But the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, also had looked into corruption allegations against Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukraine oligarch running the company.
Mr. Trump also wanted Ukraine to look into a missing Democratic National Committee server that was hacked by Russia during the 2016 presidential campaigns. An American cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike examined the server to probe the hack but the server disappeared before it got to the FBI.
Mr. Trump subscribes to an unsubstantiated theory that the server ended up in Ukraine.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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