House

Ivanka Trump meets with Jan. 6 panel: reports

Ivanka Trump spoke for hours Tuesday with investigators from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6  attack on the Capitol.

The interview with the former president’s elder daughter will solidify cooperation with some of President Trump’s inner circle — Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, spoke with the panel last week for several hours.

“It’s still going on,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters around 3 p.m., roughly five hours after Trump’s scheduled virtual appearance.

“She’s answering questions. I mean, you know, not in a broad, chatty term, but she’s answering questions.”

NBC was first to report on Ivanka Trump’s scheduled interview.

Thompson said he was unaware that Trump refused to answer any questions by claiming they were covered by executive privilege, nor did she invoke her fifth amendment right.

“She came in on her own. That has obviously significant value. We did not have to subpoena,” he said.

The interview follows a January letter to Ivanka Trump — a formal invitation that falls short of the legal weight carried by a subpoena — and was the first official outreach to a member of the Trump family.

The letter noted that Ivanka Trump spent considerable time with her father in the days leading up to the Capitol riot, including witnessing a conversation between Donald Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence, ahead of Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election.

“The Select Committee wishes to discuss the part of the conversation you observed between President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of January 6th. Similarly, the Select 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 committee wrote in the letter to Trump. 

Ivanka Trump was one of the White House officials with the greatest access to Donald Trump at the time, likely leaving her with wide-ranging knowledge of the activities in the White House surrounding the Capitol riot.

Aside from Ivanka Trump and Kushner, the committee also briefly met with Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. That exchange quickly soured, however, with Guilfoyle leaving the meeting and the committee issuing a formal subpoena for her testimony shortly thereafter. 

The panel has also subpoenaed her phone records and those of Eric Trump, another of the former president’s sons.

This story was updated at 4:43 p.m.