The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol sent a letter Thursday to Ivanka Trump asking the daughter and onetime White House adviser to former President Donald Trump to voluntarily cooperate in its probe.


What You Need To Know

  • The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol sent a letter Thursday to Ivanka Trump asking the daughter and onetime White House adviser to former President Donald Trump to voluntarily cooperate in its probe

  • In the letter, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., says the panel is seeking information from Ivanka Trump on efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from certain states and Donald Trump’s response as the attack was taking place

  • The panel also wants to know more about Donald Trump's thinking on whether to deploy the National Guard and the former president's activities and conduct in the days after the Capitol riot

  • A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump released a statement reiterating that the ex-president’s daughter believes the Capitol riot was "unacceptable," but it did not say if she planned to cooperate with the committee

In the letter, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., says the panel is seeking information from Ivanka Trump on four matters: efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from certain states, Donald Trump’s response as the attack was taking place, the former president’s thinking on whether to deploy the National Guard, and her father’s activities and conduct in the days after the Capitol riot.

“We write to request your voluntary cooperation with our investigation on a range of critical topics,” the letter says. “ … We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues related to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”

In a statement Thursday, a spokesperson for the ex-president’s daughter had “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 3:15pm, ‘any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable. The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.’”

The statement did not say whether Ivanka Trump planned to cooperate with the committee’s requests. 

The letter says Ivanka Trump was in the West Wing of the White House on Jan. 6, including allegedly being present in the Oval Office that morning when her father tried in a phone call to convince Pence to block certification of the Electoral College results.

Gen. Keith Kellogg, then Pence’s national security adviser who was also in the Oval Office during the phone call, confirmed to the committee that Trump told the vice president something to the effect of, “You don’t have the courage to make a hard decision” and, “If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago. You’re going to wimp out,” according to the letter.

At the end of the phone call, Ivanka Trump allegedly told Kellogg, ‘Mike Pence is a good man,” to which Kellogg agreed, Thompson writes.

Committee members want to know more about that and other conversations Ivanka Trump may have witnessed or participated in regarding Trump’s plan to impede the counting of electoral votes, including whether White House Counsel Pat Cipollone informed  Trump that his orders to Pence violated the Constitution or would be illegal.

Thompson also discloses in his letter that an unnamed member of the House Freedom Caucus sent a message to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows warning, “If POTUS allows this to occur … we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.”

The committee also wants to ask Ivanka Trump about any discussions leading up to her father’s 2:24 p.m. tweet on Jan. 6, which Thompson argues, citing quotes from rioters, further enraged the crowd. 

The tweet said: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

The tweet was sent despite, according to information gathered by the panel, that White House staff, including Ivanka Trump, and outside supporters of Donald Trump had urged the president to immediately appear in the media to tell the rioters to stand down. 

“As is evident from the events described above, you have knowledge bearing directly on the President’s actions or inaction on January 6th, and his state of mind as the violent attack occurred at the Capitol,” Thompson writes. “The Select Committee would very much appreciate your voluntary cooperation with its investigation on these matters.”

In an interview with ABC News earlier this month, Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, said the panel has firsthand testimony that Ivanka Trump at least twice asked her father to “stop this violence.”

Committee members also are seeking information from Ivanka Trump about whether the president gave any order to deploy the National Guard to quell the violence. Thompson wrote that the committee has yet to find any evidence that Trump issued such an order, and Chris Miller, who was the acting defense secretary, testified that Trump never contacted him at any point on Jan. 6 and or ordered him to deploy the National Guard. 

Thompson also said the panel wants to know more about Trump’s activities, conduct and state of mind in the days after Jan. 6 and whether he took “appropriate action regarding the continuing threats of violence.”

The committee chairman adds that some White House advisers and allies were concerned about keeping certain people away from Trump immediately after the riot. According to the letter, Fox News host Sean Hannity texted then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to say “Key now. No more crazy people.”

Hannity, an informal adviser to Trump, also texted McEnany after Jan. 6 to say “impeachment and 25 th amendment are real, and many people will quit.” McEnany replied: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook.  I will help reinforce.”

Ivanka Trump is the latest former Trump aide or ally the committee has approached for information about the insurrection at the Capitol. The panel also has sought cooperation, either voluntarily or by subpoena, from Meadows, ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, Trump campaign attorneys Rudy Giuiliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, and many others.

Bannon, Clark and Meadows defied their subpoenas and have been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. Bannon was indicted in November, but the DOJ has not acted on the other referrals.

On Wednesday, Trump was dealt a major blow when the Supreme Court rejected, 8-1, the former president’s request to block the National Archives from turning over White House records sought by the committee. 

Thompson proposed a Feb. 3 or 4 meeting with Ivanka Trump, but added the committee is willing to accommodate her schedule.

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