The House committee investigating the Capitol riot requested voluntary cooperation from the former president’s daughter.
Ivana Marie “Ivanka” Trump, 40, is an American businesswoman and the daughter of former President Donald Trump. She was a senior advisor in his administration and also was the director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship.
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack requested that Ivanka Trump cooperate with its investigation and asked her to testify regarding conversations with her father, former President Donald Trump, before and on January 6, 2021, as they pertain to the attack and the challenging of election results.
Lawmakers said that she had witnessed attempts to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to intervene in the certification of Joe Biden’s election.
Bennie Thompson, Committee chair Democratic Representative from Mississippi, wrote in a letter to Ivanka that he is seeking her cooperation because she was present at the White House on January 6 and had knowledge of Trump’s conversations and behavior that day.
Thompson wrote: “We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics. We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”
The panel’s request comes a day after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the transfer of hundreds of Trump’s White House documents that the former president had sought to shield from House investigators.
Ivanka’s spokesperson told CNN: “Ivanka Trump just learned that the January 6 Committee issued a public letter asking her to appear.”
“As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally. As she publicly stated that day at 3:15 pm, “any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful,” the spokesperson added.
Earlier this month, Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, said the panel has testimony that Ivanka asked her father to intervene as his supporters tore through the Capitol building.
Cheney said in an interview with ABC News: “The committee has firsthand testimony now that he (Trump) was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred. We know as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office.”
“We know members of his family, we know his daughter — we have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence.”
Various testimony obtained by the committee also shows that White House staffers asked Ivanka to help intervene several times during the attack, hoping she could persuade Trump to address the chaotic violence taking place on Capitol Hill.
The letter to Mrs. Trump was the committee’s latest step to try to obtain information from Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including his family, about the events that led up to the Capitol riot.
According to CNN, the panel has also sought logs of phone calls and text messages between the former president’s son Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of another son, Donald Trump Jr.
In the six months since it was created, the select committee has interviewed more than 350 witnesses, received more than 300 substantive tips, and issued more than 50 subpoenas, for phone and email records, Trump administration documents, witness testimony, and bank records, according to the committee’s public disclosures and lawsuits filed by witnesses.point 424 | 1
The panel has also received nearly 40,000 pages of records, including text messages, emails, and Trump administration documents provided by the National Archives in four separate tranches.