Trump attorney Cipollone: from U. of C. law school to Senate impeachment trial

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial has catapulted White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, a 1991 University of Chicago Law School graduate, from obscurity to the spotlight — enough to be mocked by Stephen Colbert on his “Late Show.”

At a White House event last November, Trump called Cipollone “the strong, silent type.”

Cipollone is one of the leads on Trump’s defense team, sitting with colleagues at the defense table on the GOP side of the Senate chamber in the opening days of the third presidential impeachment trial in the history of the U.S.

The biggest celebrity lawyer names defending Trump — Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law professor, and Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel whose probe of former President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment trial in 1999 — are absent so far. They will show up at the trial at later stages.

Cipollone is 53 and the father of 10. He graduated Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, picked up his undergraduate degree at Fordham and then headed to Chicago.

Pasquale A. Cipollone was known for being smart and conservative while at the U. of Chicago. He became a member of the school’s prestigious Law Review in the 1989-1990 school year, when the editor-in-chief was Eugene Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who is now serving as Trump’s Secretary of Labor.

In the 1990-1991 school year, Cipollone became the managing and book review editor.

“That means that among the class, he was one of the elite brains,” said Chicago-based Democratic political consultant Eric Adelstein, also a member of the class of 1991.

Another classmate is Melanie Sloan, who was the founding executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and is now a senior adviser to American Oversight, a progressive ethics watchdog group. She recalled, “I was on the progressive side of the political spectrum. Pat was on the conservative side. ... He was not particularly outspoken about his views.”

In 2016, Cipollone represented Sloan on a personal matter. “I think he’s a wonderful person. We don’t agree on anything politically, but I just cannot say enough nice things about him.”

Other U. of C. class of 1991 colleagues see him in a different light. After Cipollone sent an 8-page letter on Oct. 8 telling House Democrats about his decision to block witness and documents from their House impeachment inquiry because it was “partisan,” 21 of his law school classmates sent him a letter on Oct. 10 lambasting him.

“We are sorry to see how your letter to the congressional leadership flouts the traditions of rigor and intellectual honesty that we learned together.”

In closing, his classmates wrote, “We urge you to honor our Law School’s great traditions and the Constitution of the United States, by retracting the letter.”

Cipollone never did, and a drama revolving around the Senate trial is whether the Democrats can find four Republicans to join them in a vote to demand new evidence be admitted.

Records show that while in Chicago, Cipollone lived in Hyde Park at 1360 E. Hyde Park Blvd. and 5701 S. Kenwood Ave., moving north to 1947 N. Cleveland Ave. in Lincoln Park.

On Day 2 of the impeachment trial — a long session stretching from Tuesday to about 1:50 a.m. on Wednesday — Cipollone’s verbal clash with one of the House impeachment managers, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., earned them a scolding — not by name — from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial.

“I think it is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and president’s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body,” Roberts said.

On Tuesday night, Colbert scorched Cipollone in his opening monologue, pronouncing his name as “Sip-alone,” and including a highlight reel of the many times Cipollone called Democratic demands “ridiculous” and “outrageous.”

Said Colbert, “Look, “Sip-alone, instead of opening statements, maybe you should’ve spent your hour watching “Law and Order.”

Trump’s strong, silent type White House lawyer is obscure no more.