January 6 Select Committee contacts former president!
Well, what actually happened today is that they sent a letter to his daughter Ivanka, which is the next best thing to going on Hannity and looking directly into the camera and addressing the former president himself and speaking as slowly as possible. If you’ve got the time, I suggest you take a look at it yourself. A link to it can be found here:
The letter requests Ivanka’s voluntary cooperation with the Committee and asks that she provide documents and meet with investigators on February 3 or 4. It’s quite a document:
It’s eight pages long.
There is a three-page annex consisting of a 2017 White House letter informing staff, which would have included Ivanka, of their obligation to preserve memos, emails, texts, and other electronic communications under the Presidential Record Act
There are 32 footnotes referencing information already in possession of the committee.
The letter goes over four main areas of inquiry by the Committee:
“First, the Select Committee is investigating efforts by President Trump to impede the count of certified electoral votes by Congress on January 6, 2021.”
“Second, the Committee is investigating President Trump’s response to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th.”
“Third, the Select Committee is evaluating whether the President did or did not give any order to deploy the National Guard in response to the violence on January 6th.”
“Finally, the Select Committee is investigating the former President’s activities in the days after January 6, including the President’s state of mind during that period and whether the President took appropriate action regarding the continuing threats of violence.”
By my rough count, the Committee’s letter asks Ivanka 37 questions about her direct knowledge of statements and actions (or inactions) by Trump on January 6 and in the days immediately after. The questions vary in their specificity, but many refer to testimony the Committee has already taken and to documents already in their possession. For example, the letter refers directly to statements made to the Committee by General Keith Kellogg who was then serving as acting National Security Advisor in the White House. The letter makes clear that Kellogg told the Committee that both he and Ivanka were present in the Oval Office and listened in on a phone call Trump made on the morning of January 6 to Vice President Pence demanding that he interfere in the certification of electoral ballots.
Then the letter asks if Ivanka discussed “these issues” with “any member of the White House Counsel’s office.” The Committee goes on to ask if “any such conclusions were shared with President Trump.” They then refer to a message sent by “a member of the House Freedom Caucus with knowledge of the President’s planning for that day” stating that if “POTUS” allows interference with the electoral ballots to occur, “we’re driving a stake through the heart of the Federal Republic.” The letter asks whether Ivanka discussed “similar concerns” with the White House Chief of Staff or the Vice President’s staff or with other senior White House staff or the lawyers for his campaign or “others,” obviously indicating that they had spoken with all the parties mentioned.
Multiple questions posed to Ivanka Trump in the letter reference “certain White House staff” and other unnamed people the Committee has clearly talked to or received documents from. The letter dangles hints that land like thuds with quotes from interviews that have been conducted previously and documents already in their possession. In this way, the letter is an outline of the evidence gathered by the Committee about Trump and his actions – or refusal to act – on January 6. The letter continually refers to unnamed people in the White House close to Trump and footnotes what they have told the Committee. The footnotes and references within the text of the letter to all of the evidence the Committee has collected are numerous and scarily specific.
They are meant to be, because the target of the letter isn’t really Ivanka, it’s her father. The invitation to Trump’s favorite child to be interviewed by Committee investigators is an eight-page shot over the bow of the SS Trump, currently steaming through the placid waters around Palm Beach, Florida. Reading this letter, if I were the captain of that listing vessel, I would be putting on my life preserver and heading for the lifeboats.
I translated it as the following:
“I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family.”
from the Lion in Winter; Geoffrey Plantagenet speaking to his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after their insurrection plot is discovered by Henry.
The committee is bearing down on Trump through the one person in the entire world who matters to him-Ivanka. He will get the message, because they're smart that way.
If nothing else it will make her run screaming to Trump: "Daddy, the mean men are threatening me, help! I don't know what to wear!"
And I'd be putting on a life jacket myself. They've got him in a corner. The Titanic is sinking..
So in reading the letter, I see something I used to do as an investigative reporter at The Washington Post. Whenever you were about to publish, you had to look at the evidence you'd gathered, and make a hard-nosed, impartial assessment of who could know something about the evidence, but you hadn't asked, because, well, it was "obvious" they would never speak to a Washington Post reporter. Then you put all your evidence in writing, and made sure this person or persons received the written questions. Nine times out of ten, they would not respond. But if you didn't ask, your story was imperiled from a libel standpoint, and a moral one. The committee has to ask her. Doesn't mean they expect an answer. Doesn't mean they are "sending a message" to her father, imho