According to recent reporting, Donald Trump’s own eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, officially testified before the January 6th House Select Committee that is not only investigating the infamous Capitol attack itself, but also her father’s specific role in inciting it. Reports claim that Ivanka ultimately spent about 8 hours in total answering the panel’s questions regarding the insurrection.
Ivanka’s testimony came on the heels of her husband’s appearance before the panel, which many legal experts and analyzers rightfully believed would serve as the necessary push to finally get Ivanka in front of the committee herself.
Now, MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Melber has explained how Ivanka’s cooperation will only serve to put increased pressure on the rest of Donald Trump’s inner circle, and it lays to waste the mere notion of executive privilege for many of them.
Reports have indicated that Ivanka did not once attempt to claim executive privilege nor exercise her Fifth Amendment rights during her 8-hour testimony to the House panel. Melber says this highlights the very real probability that Ivanka’s willingness and cooperation compared to that of Trump advisors such as Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro means these key Trump insiders are very likely far more worried about their own potential criminal exposure than Ivanka is.
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“Her voluntary testimony puts pressure on anyone else stonewalling the committee,” Melber explained. “That’s the big point you don’t need to be a lawyer or expert on to understand, this committee has basically secured the cooperation of the vast majority of people it has summoned, including a lot of people in and around Trump world. We spoke with one just last week, you may recall if you watched ‘The Beat,’ one of the rally organizers. She cooperated. Jared Kushner recently cooperated, Ivanka Trump cooperating.”
“If anyone has any potentially valid claim to some White House executive privilege, it would be people like Ivanka and Jared [Kushner],” the network’s Chief Legal Correspondent went on to note. “They were White House aides to the end. Steve Bannon wasn’t. They were with Donald Trump those days in a way Steve Bannon wasn’t. What are they saying and doing? They’re saying, well, let’s just cooperate. They’re saying they don’t have any special privilege to shield them from cooperating. What’s Steve Bannon doing? Testing this for some other reasons only he knows.”
Melber openly questioned why people like Bannon and Navarro are very seriously running the risk of criminal prosecution for Contempt of Congress in an effort to avoid testifying to the Committee when both Donald Trump’s own daughter and son-in-law were willing to do so voluntarily.
“Whatever the reason is, because I’m not here to speculate, I could tell you, according to Trump’s daughter what the reason isn’t,” Ari opined. “It ain’t executive privilege.”
You can watch the clip of Ari’s MSNBC analysis here:
Featured image via Flickr/Trump White House Archives
