WASHINGTON – Ivanka Trump, former president Donald J. TrumpThe eldest daughter, who was one of his senior advisers, is in talks with the House Committee of Inquiry January 6 attack on the Capitol two people familiar with the discussions spoke about the possibility of cooperation with the panel.
It was not immediately clear whether the talks, which aides described as tentative, would result in Ms. Trump providing the Panel with substantive information, or whether they would simply be a delaying tactic, as some committee aides feared. But this was the latest example of the group trying to contact the former president’s inner circle to find out what he was doing and saying when rioters stormed the Capitol on his behalf.
Ms. Trump was one of several aides who unsuccessfully tried to convince Mr. Trump to stop the violence, which has injured more than 150 police officers and forced lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for their lives.
Ms. Trump’s lawyers have been in talks with the committee since January, when the committee sent her a letter asking her to volunteer, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
She has yet to agree on a date when she could speak with the committee’s investigators, and the committee has not threatened an imminent subpoena, people familiar with the discussions say. Those close to Ms. Trump said she hoped to avoid a subpoena and was not going to follow the path followed by her father’s ally Stephen K. Bannon, who refused to cooperate with the committee and was later charged with contempt of congressional accusations.
“Ivanka Trump is in talks with the committee to voluntarily appear for an interview,” a spokeswoman for Ms. Trump confirmed in a statement Wednesday.
Mr. Trump did not demand that his daughter ignore the committee’s demands, as he did with his other former top aides. And Ms. Trump is unlikely to take any step that Mr. Trump didn’t know about and didn’t approve of, people familiar with her thinking say.
Instead, the former president presented his adult children as victims of an investigation he called illegal.
Ms. Trump’s private conversations with the committee are taking place as the committee’s lawyers also is negotiating with another potentially important witness: Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who helped lead efforts to reverse the 2020 election results.
During those discussions, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer made it clear to the committee that the former mayor of New York did not intend to provide information against Mr. Trump, arguing that doing so would violate attorney-client privilege and Mr. Trump’s requirements for executive confidentiality. , but he is considering providing information about his relationship with members of Congress, according to a person familiar with the talks.
With the Capitol under siege, both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump called lawmakers in an attempt to delay confirmation of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
So far, the committee has treated Ms. Trump with respect, seeking only her voluntary cooperation, insisting that its members respect her privacy, and emphasizing that its questions will be limited to events directly related to the January 6 attack.
This is partly because members of the group see her as a key witness in their investigation and worry about the public backlash if it is perceived as being too aggressive towards the former president’s family members. The committee did not want to use its subpoena powers against members of Mr. Trump’s family, the media, and members of Congress.
The Panel has already received some testimony about Ms. Trump’s interactions with her father in connection with the January 6 attack and the events that led to the violence.
January 20th miss trump letterThe committee said it had heard from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Pence’s national security adviser, about Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the crowd engulfed the Capitol, despite White House officials including Ms Trump at least twice – convincing him to do so.
Capitol Riot Aftermath: Key Events
Card 1 of 3
Civil lawsuits. federal judge in Washington rules this three civil suits against Donald J. Trump, linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, can move forward. The ruling means plaintiffs can ask the former president for information about his role in the events.
classified information. The National Archives stated that disclosed classified information among the documents that Mr. Trump took with him from the White House when he left office. The discovery raises new doubts about how the former president handled government documents.
Mr. Kellogg testified that Mr. Trump turned down requests from him, as well as from Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary. Mr. Kellogg then approached Ms. Trump to intervene.
“She came back because Ivanka can be quite pushy,” Mr. Kellogg testified.
Mr. Kellogg also testified that he and Ms. Trump witnessed a telephone conversation in the Oval Office on the morning of January 6, in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence into agreeing to a plan to drop the electoral vote for Mr. – Biden. when Congress convened for the official tally, thus canceling the 2020 election and allowing Mr. Trump to remain in office.
Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president accused Mr. Pence of not being “tough enough” to cancel the election. Ms. Trump then turned to Mr. Kellogg and said, “Mike Pence is a good man,” Mr. Kellogg testified.
The investigation threatens to draw unwanted attention to Ms. Trump, who has all but disappeared from the public eye since her father’s tumultuous end to the presidency. During her four years in the Trump administration, she worked to build her own political brand, focusing on women in the workforce and presenting himself as a more polished Trump, without mean-spirited tweets and erratic behavior.
She gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention and became one of the most popular fundraisers and as a campaign stand-in for both her father and other Republican candidates.
Mr. Trump enjoyed promoting the idea that his daughter might one day run for president herself, and since leaving the White House, there have been rumors that Ms. Trump might challenge Senator Marco Rubio for his seat in Florida, where she moved from with his family. after the end of Mr Trump’s term.
Instead, Ms. Trump has largely faded into the shadows, surprising even some longtime confidants. On the social media she has curated for years, she has posted three photos of herself in the last 13 months: two photo shoots of her getting her shots and one delivering boxes of food.
She is still in demand with Republican candidates in the midterm elections, but has not yet been in the campaign and in the support game. Instead, she lives her private life in Miami, a few hours away from her father’s Mar-a-Lago complex, where she still draws tabloid admiration to this day.
Alan Feyer contributed reporting.