The committee investigating the US Capitol riot has requested an interview with Ivanka Trump.
In a letter to Ms Trump, politicians say they are seeking her voluntary cooperation and want to talk to her in early February about the events leading up to and during the insurrection on 6 January 2021.
The US House of Representatives committee believes she was in direct contact with her father, former US President Donald Trump, during key moments when his supporters stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win.
As one of his advisers, she was also “present in the Oval Office” for key conversations, the panel said.
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The committee said it also wants to find out what she knows about her father’s efforts to pressure then-vice president Mike Pence to reject the 2020 election results.
The panel said this includes a telephone call she witnessed between them on the morning of the riot.
Keith Kellogg, who was Mr Pence’s national security adviser, allegedly told investigators he was there and heard Mr Trump question whether Mr Pence had the courage to delay the congressional counting of the electoral votes.
The Constitution makes it clear that a vice president’s role is largely ceremonial in the certification process
The committee also said it was probing whether Donald Trump’s own White House lawyers concluded that he attempted to interfere with the election outcome.
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“The committee has information suggesting that President Trump’s White House counsel may have concluded that the actions President Trump directed Vice President Pence to take would violate the Constitution or would be otherwise illegal,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson wrote.
They also think Ms Trump may have heard about these alleged efforts from Mr Pence’s staff, members of Congress and the White House counsel’s office.
Ivanka Trump was one of her father’s advisers during his presidency. Pic: AP
Ivanka Trump ‘tried to persuade father to quell the violence’
The committee wants to ask her about her actions during the insurrection and alleges that she implored her father to quell the violence of his supporters.
“Testimony obtained by the committee indicates that members of the White House staff requested your assistance on multiple occasions to intervene in an attempt to persuade president Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill,” Mr Thompson wrote.
“We are particularly interested in this question: Why didn’t White House staff simply ask the president to walk to the briefing room and appear on live television – to ask the crowd to leave the capital?” he added.
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Members of the committee say they have no evidence of Mr Trump trying to deploy federal troops to end the 6 January violence and want to ask Ms Trump if he made any effort to do so.
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump said: “Ivanka Trump just learned that the January 6 committee issued a public letter asking her to appear.
“As the committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally.”
As part of their probe, the panel has interviewed nearly 400 witnesses, sent dozens of subpoenas and received more than 35,000 pages of records.