By Billy House
Jan 20, 2022, 7:42 PM – Updated on Jan 20, 2022, 9:21 PM
Word Count: 597
The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, wrote Thursday in a letter to Trump that the panel wants her voluntary cooperation “on a range of critical topics.” Those include conversations former President Donald Trump had with his vice president, Mike Pence, and why quicker action wasn’t taken to help stop the violence at the Capitol.

Ivanka Trump was a White House adviser to the former president and Thompson’s letter says she was present in the Oval Office during during some moments on Jan. 6 and the days leading up to it. She didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The committee is investigating the events surrounding the siege at the Capitol by a mob of the former president’s supporters as Pence and Congress were certifying the electoral votes in the 2020 election. President Trump spoke at a rally before that, where he repeated his false claims that the election was stolen and urged the crowd to march to the Capitol.

Thompson wrote that the committee wants to ask Ivanka Trump about any conversations she “may have witnessed or participated in regarding the President’s plan to obstruct or impede the counting of electoral votes.”

Other areas of inquiry, the letter says, include the former president’s conduct in the days after Jan. 6, including his “state of mind” and why he didn’t act as soon as the mob overwhelmed police barricades.

“We are particularly interested in this question: Why didn’t the White House staff simply ask the President to walk to the briefing room and appear on live television — to ask the crowd to leave the Capitol?” Thompson’s letter says.

The letter says that testimony already obtained by the panel “indicates that members of the White House staff requested your assistance on multiple occasions to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill.”

The panel also is looking into the pressure Donald Trump exerted on Pence to engage in a plan to “to reject certain states’ votes in the presidential election.”

“One of the president’s discussions with the vice president occurred by phone on the morning of January 6. You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation,” the letter states.

Thompson said Thursday that committee lawyers are in contact with attorneys for Pence but there has been no movement in negotiations on having him talk to the committee.

The committee’s request to Ivanka Trump comes a day after the Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of pages of former president’s White House records could be turned over to the panel.

Thompson said Thursday the committee was still “anxiously awaiting” receipt of the about 800 pages of material being turned over by the National Archives, including visitor and call logs, emails, draft speeches and handwritten notes.

Thompson and other committee members have characterized Trump’s records as key to the panel’s investigation, which includes what Trump and his inner circle did and said leading up to the riot by a mob of the former president’s supporters seeking to disrupt certification of the Electoral College vote in the 2020 presidential election.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Trump’s bid to block the release on grounds of executive privilege.