Former President Donald Trump slammed the House committee investigating the Capitol riot for requesting that his daughter and former senior adviser Ivanka Trump cooperate with the probe, accusing lawmakers of going after “children.”
“It’s a very unfair situation for my children. Very, very unfair,” Donald Trump told the Washington Examiner in an interview for an opinion piece published Friday.
“It’s a disgrace, what’s going on. They’re using these things to try and get people’s minds off how incompetently our country is being run,” he continued. “And they don’t care. They’ll go after children.”
Ivanka Trump is not a child. She is, in fact, a 40-year-old adult woman with children of her own.
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot asked Ivanka Trump on Thursday to provide information for its probe. The former president’s daughter was a White House senior adviser at the time her father’s supporters rushed the Capitol with the intention of preventing Joe Biden from winning the election.
In its letter to Ivanka Trump, the committee requested her “voluntary cooperation” about “a wide range of critical topics” related to the Capitol riot. The letter said the lawmakers want to discuss conversations she witnessed or participated in relating to “the president’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes,” among other issues.
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump said Thursday that she had “just learned” of the committee’s request that she speak with it.
Earlier this month, the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), told ABC News that the committee has “firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask [Trump] to please stop this violence.” On the day of the riot, Ivanka Trump released a statement saying: “The violence must stop immediately. Please be peaceful.”
The committee appears to be closing on the former president’s family and close allies, leading to stronger backlash from the previous occupant of the White House. The panel has subpoenaed communications from his son Eric Trump, who spoke at the rally that preceded the riot. Committee members have also subpoenaed Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée to Donald Trump Jr., who served as an advisor to the elder Trump.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump cannot stop the White House from releasing records to lawmakers investigating the riot.
“They are using whatever powers they have. They couldn’t care less,” the former president told the Examiner of the committee members. “They are vicious people.”
