The Jan. 6 committee chastised former first daughter Ivanka Trump for not being fully straightforward with the panel in an executive summary released on Monday.
Ivanka reportedly sat for deposition before the committee for about eight hours, but during that time she often exhibited a “lack of full recollection of certain issues” and was not always “forthcoming” as some of the other witnesses had been about her father’s actions surrounding the Capitol riot, according to the executive summary.
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“Ivanka Trump was not as forthcoming as Cipollone and others about President Trump’s conduct,” the executive summary said, “Ivanka Trump’s Chief of Staff Julie Radford had a more specific recollection of Ivanka Trump’s actions and statements.”
One example cited in the summary included that Ivanka dismissed claims she attended her father’s Jan. 6 rally at the White House Ellipse “to keep the event on an even keel.”
“No. I don’t know who said that or where that came from,” she told the committee tersely. Her aide, Radford, however, gave a lengthy answer appearing to contradict her, insisting that she thought “she might be able to help calm the situation down.”
Ivanka Trump was not the only witness the panel knocked for being evasive during questioning. The panel called out several allies of the former president, such as former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who the committee claimed occasionally acted as if “she was testifying from pre-prepared talking points.”
“The Select Committee recognizes of course that most of the testimony we have gathered was given more than a year after January 6th,” the executive summary conceded. “Recollections are not perfect, and the Committee expects that different accounts of the same events will naturally vary. Indeed, the lack of any inconsistencies in witness accounts would itself be suspicious. And many witnesses may simply recall different things than others.”
The panel also emphasized in the summary that Ivanka Trump backed Attorney General William Barr’s assessment that there was no evidence of election-altering fraud in the 2020 election. Her remarks were played by the panel during one of its public hearings.
On Monday, the panel revealed it would issue a criminal referral for former President Donald Trump on four categories of criminal conduct: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and inciting an insurrection. Attorney John Eastman and “others” will also face a criminal referral from the panel to the Justice Department.
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Such a referral is non-binding and it will ultimately be up to the department to decide whether or not to bring forward charges.
Since her departure from the White House, Ivanka Trump has contended she wants to steer clear of politics and focus on her family.
