US House Committee Investigating Jan. 6 Publicly Asks Ivanka Trump to Testify

By Yehudit Garmaise

The US House of Representatives committee that is investigating the causes and perpetrators of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has gathered evidence that Ivanka Trump was in direct contact with former President Trump at key moments that day, according to a press release the committee sent out today.

Today, Ivanka Trump received a public letter in which US Rep Bennie Thompson, (D-Miss), the chairman of the investigating committee, asked her to voluntarily testify about her conversations with Trump regarding his plans for Jan 6, 2021, the day on which 2,500 Trump supporters breached the Capitol building in Washington, DC, to attempt to disrupt and prevent the joint-session of Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

"[T]he Committee would like to discuss any other conversations you may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President's plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes,” Rep. Thompson wrote to Ivanka Trump, who served as a senior advisor to the former president for all four years that he was in office, and who along with her brothers and father, has previously refused to testify. 

"As Jan. 6, 2021, approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan,” wrote Rep. Thompson, who also noted that Ivanka Trump also often worked in the Oval Office. “One of the president's discussions with the vice president occurred by phone on the morning of January 6th.”

“You were present in the Oval Office,” US Rep Thompson wrote to Ms. Trump, “and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation.”

Rep. Thompson said that he has found no evidence that the president made any attempt to call the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of any personnel to protect members of Congress, while the US Capitol was locked down, and lawmakers and staff had to be evacuated as rioters assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property, and occupied the building for several hours during which five people died, and many people were injured: including 138 police officers. 

In addition, within seven months of Jan. 6. 2021, four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide.

“As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally,” read a vague statement that she released, without mentioning whether she would testify and that she was present backstage and was seen in a video in which she was speaking with her father while they viewed a video of the crowd.

photo credit : Wikipedia