Ivanka Trump is asked to appear before a committee on January 6th.
The House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has asked Ivanka Trump, former President Trump’s daughter and one of his White House aides, to voluntarily appear before the committee.
The request, the first official outreach to a member of the Trump family, notes that Ivanka Trump spent a significant amount of time with her father in the days leading up to Jan. 6, including witnessing a conversation between him and Vice President Mike Pence ahead of Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election.
“The Select Committee desires to review the portion of the discussion you saw between President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on January 6th.” Similarly, the Select Committee would want to explore any additional discussions you may have heard or engaged in about the president’s plot to disrupt or delay electoral vote counting,” the committee stated in a letter to Trump.
The president’s oldest daughter was one of the officials with the most access to the president at the time, which certainly provided her with extensive knowledge of the events surrounding Jan. 6.
If Ivanka Trump decides to comply, her testimony might be devastating to her father, since the committee concluded its letter with a request from Trump White House counsel Don McGahn to preserve data such as text messages.
The eight-page letter primarily requests that the younger Trump rebuild her activities on the day of the disturbance and offer insight into White House measures taken — or not done — that day.
It also includes material collected by the committee from additional interviews with former White House employees, as well as phone records, which include fresh text conversations from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity.
According to the committee, there is evidence that the White House counsel “may have decided that the activities President Trump authorized Vice President Pence to perform would violate the Constitution or be otherwise unlawful.”
The panel wants to know whether any of these results were shared with the elder Trump, Pence, or then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
According to the committee, the White House was aware of the rising violence at the Capitol after the president’s address. It quoted excerpts from talks with Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security advisor, who depicted Ivanka Trump as one of the only people in the White House who might persuade her father to stop the violence.
The committee noted, “Testimony acquired by the Select Committee shows that members of the White House staff asked your help on many occasions to intercede in an effort to convince President Trump to address the continued lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill.”
The panel observed that earlier that day, Donald Trump remarked in his address that he hoped Pence did “the right thing,” before tweeting at 2:24 p.m. that Pence “didn’t have the fortitude to do what should have been done to preserve our Country and our Constitution.” The panel questioned Ivanka Trump about the conversations she had “before and after” the post.
“We are especially interested in this question: Why didn’t the White House staff simply ask the president to go to the briefing room and urge the audience to leave the Capitol?” the panel wrote.
The request to Ivanka Trump comes after the committee allegedly subpoenaed and received Eric Trump’s phone records, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée.
The letter also delves further into Hannity’s exchanges, exposing texts he sent to then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany providing advise on a press strategy after the violence.
The group only disclosed snippets of their chat, including two of what they call a five-point proposal.
“1- No more stolen election stuff,” Hannity allegedly texted McEnany, who testified before the committee last week.
“2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th Amendment do exist, and many individuals will resign…”
McEnany is said to have answered, “Love that. Thank you very much. That is the game plan. “I’ll help reinforce…,” she added, but it’s unclear what more she said.
In another partial discussion provided by the committee, Hannity stated it was “critical” to keep Trump away from specific individuals, adding, “No more insane people,” to which McEnany replied, “Yes, 100%.”
The discussion offers up a new line of investigation for the committee, which hopes Ivanka Trump can clear up.
“The Select Committee would prefer to examine this endeavor after January 6th in order to encourage President Trump not to connect himself with specific persons and to prevent further discussion of election fraud claims,” they wrote.
The letter to Ivanka Trump is the latest in a series of voluntary requests from the committee, including ones issued to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Scott Perry (R-Texas) (R-Pa.).
The chairman of the Jan. 6 select committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss. ), said he also expected to ask Pence to testify with the panel this month.
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