Ivanka Trump testifies that father’s call with Pence saddened her

Ivanka Trump told investigators for the Jan 6 House committee that she was saddened by an Oval Office phone call she overheard in which her father tried unsuccessfully to convince then Vice-President Mike Pence to help overturn their election loss.

Former president Donald Trump’s daughter, who served as an adviser to him in the White House, said it was a “pretty heated phone conversation” about Pence’s role in the electoral vote certification in the Senate.

A transcript of her testimony to the committee investigating last year’s assault on the US Capitol was among more than 30 released on Friday night.

Also released was the testimony of former attorney-general William Barr, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and one of Trump’s election attorneys, Sidney Powell.

Pence ultimately refused to reject electoral votes, as then Trump wanted him to do.

“There appeared to be a discussion over what the Vice-President’s rights were in his position and obligations in his position presiding over the Senate,” Trump told the committee.

“It was a different tone than I had heard him take with the Vice-President before,” she said. “It saddened me to see them having a disagreement. They had been very consistently on the same page.”

The transcripts released on Friday join dozens of others made public this week, along with the committee’s final report after a 17-month investigation.

The 814-page report, released late on Thursday, blames Trump for inciting violence that day and seeking to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Former House sergeant-at-arms Paul Irving told the committee in his deposition that two days before Jan 6, he had received a call from then US Capitol police chief Steven Sund saying he had been offered about 125 unarmed National Guardsmen to help with the Capitol security.

They decided to have a conference call with then Senate sergeant-at-arms Mike Stenger to talk about it. The decision was to not accept the offer.

“It was a combination of operationally the chief didn’t feel that they would add much to his plan, and the intelligence really didn’t speak for anything that would justify the need for them,” Irving said.

After Pence refused to go along with Trump’s plan to reject electors while the mob was attacking the Capitol, the relationship between the two turned sour.

Former attorney-general Bill Barr said he felt compelled to have the Justice Department look into some of the complaints being raised after the election.

“I sort of shudder to think what the situation would have been if the position of the department was, ‘We’re not even looking at this until after Biden’s in office.’” Barr testified. “I’m not sure we would have had a transition at all. So that’s why I did it.”

He became convinced, however, that there was not fraud sufficient to overturn the results and said so publicly.

This angered Trump.

“The President was as mad as I’ve ever seen him,” Barr recalled, according to his transcript.

He said Trump told him, “You didn’t have to say this. You must’ve said this because you hate Trump.”

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES