Capitol riot shook loyalties of Trump aides, new transcripts show
- Trump’s closest associates spent hours with investigators, often under oath.
- Trump’s oldest son and daughter spoke of frustrations, urgent efforts to get him to do more.
- Top White House aides feared their careers, legacy tarnished alongside Trump’s due to violence.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault released a massive trove of documents earlier this week that shed new light on how some of Donald Trump’s closest advisors and family members were tested by the president’s refusal to quickly and publicly try to stop the violent insurrection against the seat of American democracy.
The thousands of pages of newly released interview transcripts show how even Trump’s own children – Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – desperately tried to get Trump to issue an unequivocal public statement. It would not only stop people from getting injured or killed at the Capitol, they argued, but help protect Trump’s legacy from being tarnished by the mob protest that he himself had encouraged during a speech earlier in the day at a rally a few blocks away.
Ivanka Trump, a senior White House advisor and Trump’s eldest daughter, told the committee she ‘fought like hell’ to do the best she could, including direct appeals to Trump as he watched the violence unfold while relaxing in his presidential dining room.
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Others, the new transcripts show, were furious with the president, claiming his failure to forcefully respond tarnished not only his legacy but their own as well. “It was totally unnecessary and incredibly unfortunate,” top Trump advisor Hope Hicks testified about the violent protests of Jan. 6. The committee also released a mountain of text messages it obtained during its 18-month investigation, including one from Hicks to another White House official, lamenting that because of Trump, “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”
Here’s what 11 of them had to say:
Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump told the January 6 committee that she learned of violence at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, when top Trump adviser Eric Herschmann “barged” into her office and told her to turn the television on.
Within minutes, she said, she rushed to the Oval Office, through a pantry and into the president’s private dining room, where she urged him to send out a tweet. When the violence continued, she helped him draft another. “It was important to underscore the goal,” she told the committee. “Here he says, you know, very specifically, ‘No violence!’ with an exclamation mark.” Once law enforcement began restoring order at the Capitol, Ivanka Trump said discussions turned to what the president should say more formally the next day, making sure to assure the American people there would be a peaceful transfer of power to Biden.
Grilled by committee members on why she didn’t do more to stop her father from perpetuating false claims of a stolen election or illegal attempts to overturn it, Ivanka said she didn’t the best she could. “I intervened when I felt like I had the knowledge and was apprised of the…
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