“She answers questions. Without renewing, but she’s responding,” the committee chair, Bennie Thompson, said, adding that she was not sure if she had ever invoked her right to remain silent. “She came alone, that is of great value. †
Closely adviser to her father Donald Trump when he was in the White House, Ivanka Trump was not subpoenaed. She was invited in January to speak before this House committee, which was made up largely of elected Democrats.
Witness to a conversation
They then claimed to have evidence showing that she had tried to convince her father to call for an end to the violence when a mob of his supporters violently entered Congress on January 6, 2021, to prevent parliamentarians from winning the victory. Joe Biden would approve.
The elected officials are interested in “every conversation” she would have witnessed or participated in, most notably a phone call from Donald Trump on the morning of Jan. 6. He would then have tried to force his Vice President Mike Pence to stop counting the votes of voters who would record Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
“You were in the Oval Office and you have at least observed part of this telephone conversation,” Bennie Thompson said in his letter of invitation.
800 witnesses heard
The commission has already heard from nearly 800 witnesses, including Jared Kushner last week. These testimonies come after several revelations in the press in the months leading up to the attack, which had shaken American democracy.
For example, Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court dean Clarence Thomas, sent more than 20 messages between November 2020 and January 2021 to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, pleading with him to block the victory. † Jared Kushner’s name is featured in one, shipped Nov. 13.
The U.S. press also revealed a nearly eight-hour gap in Donald Trump’s calls from the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, especially during the period when protesters forced the entrance to the Capitol. According to the committee, Trump could have used unofficial channels, such as hard-to-trace prepaid phones, which the former president vehemently denied.
