In Pat Cipollone, Trump finds a lawyer he likes

By ELIANA JOHNSON06/12/2019 05:01 AM EDTDuring the 21 months of Don McGahn’s stormy tenure at the White House, he would often tell colleagues, half joking: “It’s a good week if I don’t get called into the Oval.” Pat Cipollone, McGahn’s successor as White House counsel, doesn’t engage in the same sort of gallows humor — if only because, through what allies say is good personal chemistry with his mercurial boss and critics counter is a willingness to enable his worst instincts, he’s managed to stay on the good side of a president who fondly calls him “Mr. Attorney.”Story Continued BelowIn six months on the job, Cipollone has turned the White House Counsel’s Office into a central hub of activity and made himself a constant presence in the Oval Office. A 53-year-old former corporate lawyer with an affable style, he has also made enough of an impression on Trump that the president has begun asking aides for their assessment of the White House’s top lawyer — a sign that, at the least, Cipollone has his client’s attention.“He has the president’s ear, he’s earned the president’s respect and that allows people in this building not just to survive but to succeed in doing their jobs,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the president.Cipollone is not one to seek attention — friends note that he is often found on the edge of photographs, as if he were seeking to step outside the frame. Most recently, Cipollone was among the prominent voices who told Trump he could use his emergency powers to slap tariffs on Mexico — and then, alongside Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he helped shape a last-minute deal to end the showdown.The centrality of the counsel’s office in White House policymaking is normal, and Cipollone consulted with predecessors in both parties before taking the job. He likes to tell friends that his father, a factory worker, went to “UCLA — University of the Corner of Lexington Avenue,” according to his friend and former colleague Jonathan Missner, the managing partner of Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner, the law firm Cipollone left to join the White House.The father of 10 children, Cipollone is also a devout Catholic. The Democrats’ seizure of the House of Representatives last November, which quashed any hopes that the administration would pass another piece of significant legislation before the 2020 election, has also made the counsel’s office a renewed locus of activity, unleashing an onslaught of Democratic investigations into everything from Trump’s real estate business to whether he obstructed justice to the impact of his short-lived child-separation policy.“The battles we had during the first year were tax reform and health care — that was a lot of public policy, not a lot of legal stuff,” said the Federalist Society’s Leo, who spoke personally to the president this winter to recommend Cipollone for the job. “The benefits of that strategy are magnified in this case because they general view is that the House leadership wants to run out the clock.”***Cipollone’s newfound power has raised concerns among some of Trump’s critics within the administration who say the counsel’s office has an important role to play in tying the hands of an impulsive president who has at times displayed little respect for constitutional constraints.