Ivanka Trump asked to testify by Jan. 6 committee about Capitol riot
We’d like a word, please.
The House committee investigating the breach at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has asked Ivanka Trump, daughter of former President Trump, to voluntarily testify as the bipartisan lawmakers make their first public attempt to arrange an interview with a Trump family member.
The former first daughter was sent a letter on Thursday asking to submit to grilling about what she knows about the violent attack and what her father did or didn’t do about it.
One killed, 13 arrests as Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol building in MAGA riot
“[We are] inviting some people to come and talk to us ... Ivanka Trump,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the committee’s chairman, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“Ivanka Trump just learned that the Jan. 6 committee issued a public letter asking her to appear,” her spokesman said. “As the committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the Jan. 6 rally.”
The statement also repeated a public message she issued on the afternoon of the attack saying “the violence must stop.”
The congressional panel has deemed Trump’s daughter a crucial witness because she reportedly visited her father several times in the White House on Jan. 6 as the mob of his supporters marauded unchecked through the Capitol, hunting for perceived enemies.
“You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation,” the letter to Ivanka Trump said, adding that the committee “wishes to discuss the part of the conversation you observed” between the then-president and Vice President Mike Pence.
One of the key issues: could Trump’s inaction as the attack unfolded, combined with his incitement of the attack at a speech just before the riot, be construed as possible grounds for a criminal referral against him to the Department of Justice.
“We are particularly interested in this question,” asked the Jan. 6 committee in the letter to Ms. Trump. “Why didn’t White House staff simply ask the President to walk to the briefing room and appear on live television — to ask the crowd to leave the Capitol?”
Earlier this week, the panel issued subpoenas to lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team who filed court challenges to the election that fueled the lie that the race had been stolen from Trump.
The committee says the extraordinary trove of material it has collected — 35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump — is fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries.
The next phase of the investigation will include a series of public hearings in the coming months.
With News Wire Services
