Ivanka Trump (left), Mike Pence.Photo: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images; JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Ivanka Trumphad one thing to say aboutMike Penceafter he announced he wouldn’t be overturning the 2020 presidential election in favor of her father, former PresidentDonald Trump, theAssociated Press reports.
After Pence and her father had a phone call from the Oval Office in which the then-vice president rebuffed Trump’s attempts to have Pence reject Electoral College votes, Ivanka, a senior White House aide, turned to retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and said, “Mike Pence is a good man.”
Kellogg — who briefly served as acting national security adviser in the Trump White House before becoming Pence’s national security adviser — responded, “Yes, he is,” according to an AP story published Monday, citing congressional testimony.
Trump’s repeated lie that fraud is to blame for his defeat in the 2020 election isbaseless, but his followers have latched on to it.
Around the same time as his Jan. 6, 2021, speech, a mob of some of his supportersstormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers.
Some of the rioters chanted abouthanging the vice president; five people died.
A bipartisan House of Representatives committee now investigating the deadly Capitol riots recently announced it has requested that Ivanka provide information via a voluntary interview, noting that she “was in direct contact with the former President at key moments on January 6th and that she may have information relevant to other matters critical to the Select Committee’s investigation.”
Riots at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6.Jon Cherry/Getty Images
Footage taken prior to the riots shows Ivanka — along with her adult siblings, Don Jr. andEric Trump— attending their father’s “Stop the Steal” speech earlier that day.
Republican Rep.Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House committee, previously told ABC News that the committee has “firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in [the Oval Office] at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence” as the riots unfolded.
Ivanka served for four years as a top aide to her dad while he was president, though she has avoided politics since leaving the White House last year.
A popular figure among some conservatives, she and her husband,Jared Kushner, also faced sustained scrutiny for their influence given their lack of political qualifications. Critics also said Ivanka and Kushner, took pains to create hypocritical distance between themselves and her father’s most controversial policies.
Pence, meanwhile, has recently become more vocal about President Trump’s continued false claims that he had the power to overturn the election.
Speakingat a conservative event over the weekendin Florida, the former vice president said: “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”
“There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes,” Pence said. “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election.”
Pence also recently told Fox News hehasn’t spoken to Trump in nearly a year, calling Jan. 6 “a tragic day in the life of the nation.”
A spokeswoman for Ivanka did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment; neither did representatives of the Jan. 6 congressional committee.
source: people.com
