Jan. 6 committee asks Ivanka Trump for cooperation, testimony

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack requested on Thursday that Ivanka Trump cooperate with its investigation and asked her to testify regarding conversations with her father, former President Donald Trump, before and on Jan. 6, 2020, as they pertain to the attack and the challenging of election results.

In a new letter addressed to the former president’s daughter, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., requested she voluntary provide an interview with the committee, citing her presence in the Oval Office.

“As January 6th approached, President Trump attempted on multiple occasions to persuade Vice President Pence to participate in his plan. 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 and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation,” Thompson says in the letter.

“[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,” the letter says.

Thompson wrote that the panel’s questions to Trump’s eldest daughter, who also served as a senior adviser in the White House for four years, would 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 Committee is aware that certain White House staff devoted time during the violent riot to rebutting questions regarding whether the President was attempting to hold up deployment of the guard[…],” it says in the letter. “But the Committee has identified no evidence that President Trump issued any order, or took any other action, to deploy the guard that day. Nor does it appear that President Trump made any calls at all to the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency to request deployment of their personnel to the Capitol.”

In a press release Thursday announcing the letter, the committee said the evidence it has already obtained shows “that Ms. Trump was in direct contact with the former President at key moments on January 6th and that she may have information relevant to other matters critical to the Select Committee’s investigation.”

A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump responded to the letter in a statement but did not directly address whether she would voluntarily comply with the committee’s request.

“Ivanka Trump just learned that the…