Ivanka Trump to Testify to House Panel Investigating Jan. 6 Attack
WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump, former President Donald J. Trump’s eldest daughter, who served as one of his senior advisers, plans to testify on Tuesday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Trump was one of several aides who tried to persuade the president to call off the violence that ultimately injured more than 150 police officers and sent lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence fleeing for safety, according to evidence gathered by the committee.
The schedule for her testimony, which was reported earlier by NBC, comes days after her husband, Jared Kushner, who was also a top adviser to Mr. Trump, sat for an interview and provided what one member of the panel described as “valuable” and “helpful” information.
“There were some things revealed, but we’ll just share that a little later,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said of Mr. Kushner’s testimony.
Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner are among the highest-ranking Trump White House officials to testify before the committee. The interviews have been closed to the public as the panel conducts its work in secret.
Ms. Trump’s lawyers have been in talks with the committee since January, when it sent her a letter requesting voluntary testimony. In the letter, dated Jan. 20, the committee said it had heard from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Mr. Pence’s national security adviser. Mr. Kellogg had described Mr. Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the mob engulfed the Capitol, despite White House officials — including Ms. Trump, at least twice — urging him to do so, the letter said.
Mr. Kellogg testified that the president had rejected entreaties from him as well as from Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary. Mr. Kellogg then appealed to Ms. Trump to intervene.
“She went back in, because Ivanka can be pretty tenacious,” Mr. Kellogg testified.
Mr. Kellogg also testified that he and Ms. Trump had witnessed a telephone call in the Oval Office on the morning of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to go along with a plan to throw out electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. when Congress met to certify the Electoral College results. The call to Mr. Pence was part of an effort to invalidate the 2020 election and give Mr. Trump a chance to stay in office.
Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president had accused Mr. Pence of not being “tough enough” to overturn the election. Ms. Trump then said to Mr. Kellogg, “Mike Pence is a good man,” Mr. Kellogg testified.
The committee has interviewed more than 800 witnesses and plans to interview dozens more. Mr. Thompson told reporters on Monday that he had authorized five additional subpoenas that day.
Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key Developments
Ivanka Trump to testify. The former president’s daughter, who served as one of his senior advisers, plans to testify before the Jan. 6 House committee. Ms. Trump was in the West Wing as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. She is said to have tried to persuade her father to call off the rioters.
Justice Department widens inquiry. Federal prosecutors are said to have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigation to examine the possible culpability of a broad range of pro-Trump figures involved in efforts to overturn the election. The investigation was initially focused on the rioters who had entered the Capitol.
Investigating Trump’s actions. Evidence gathered by the Justice Department and House committee show how former President Donald J. Trump’s “Be there, will be wild!” tweet incited far-right militants ahead of Jan. 6, while call logs reveal how personally involved Mr. Trump was in his attempt to stay in office before and during the attack.
Judge says Trump likely committed crimes. In a court filing in a civil case, the Jan. 6 House committee laid out the crimes it believed Mr. Trump might have committed. The federal judge assigned to the case ruled that Mr. Trump most likely committed felonies in trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Virginia Thomas’s text messages. In the weeks before the Capitol riot, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent several texts imploring Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, to take steps to overturn the election. The Jan. 6 House committee is likely to seek an interview with Ms. Thomas, said those familiar with the matter.
Mr. Thompson said the committee had ruled out a subpoena for Mr. Pence, citing “significant information” it had received from two of his aides, Marc Short and Greg Jacob.
“There won’t be a subpoena,” Mr. Thompson said, adding, “We’ve been able to validate a lot of the statements attributed to President Trump and the vice president without his specific testimony.”
“There’s no effort on the part of the committee to get him to come in,” he said of Mr. Pence, adding: “We initially thought it would be important, but at this point we know that people broke in here and wanted to hang him. We know that his security detail had to protect him in an undisclosed location in the Capitol. We know the people who tried to get him to change his mind, about the count and all of that. So what is it we need?”
Mr. Thompson also indicated that the panel would be likely to call Mr. Trump as a witness.
“I don’t know anything else we could ask Donald Trump that the public doesn’t already know,” Mr. Thompson said. “He ran his mouth for four years.”
