Skip to content Skip to footer

Trump Calls Jan. 6 Committee’s Request to Speak With Ivanka “Very Unfair”

The Jan. 6 committee’s request is voluntary, but could provide important insights into Trump’s thinking on that day.

White House Advisor Ivanka Trump looks on as President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 20, 2020.

Former President Donald Trump derided the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack over its request to speak with his daughter and former White House adviser, Ivanka Trump.

The request from the January 6 commission is voluntary, and Ivanka Trump has not yet been served with a subpoena order requiring her to speak.

Nevertheless, Trump described the situation as “very unfair,” and said the commission consisted of “vicious people” for daring to ask his daughter to speak with them.

Ivanka Trump, who served in an official role as an aide to her father while he was president, was in the White House the day that the Capitol was attacked by a mob of Trump loyalists, shortly after the former president gave an incendiary speech telling them to “fight like hell” or they “[wouldn’t] have a country anymore.”

The select committee wants to speak with Ivanka Trump about an Electoral College scheme that the Donald Trump campaign purportedly wanted to use and the former president’s actions during the Capitol breach.

“Given Ms. Trump’s presence in the White House on January 6th, the Select Committee is seeking her knowledge about the former President’s actions related to the deployment of the National Guard to respond to the violence,” according to a press release from the commission.

Commission chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) elaborated on the request, stating they wanted to know whether Trump impeded or ignored requests to quell the attack.

“The Committee has identified no evidence that President Trump issued any order, or took any other action, to deploy the guard that day,” Thompson said in his letter to Ivanka Trump. “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.”

The committee also wants to speak with Ivanka about her father’s “state of mind” during the attack, Thompson added.

Notably, the former president has not been as protective of the adult children of his opponents. In October 2020, two weeks before Election Day, Trump demanded that Attorney General William Barr investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, over allegations made in a heavily disputed story that was published in The New York Post at the time.

“We have got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast,” Trump said.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy