More testimony from Ivanka Trump was released Monday during the committee’s second public hearing on Jan. 6.
Much of the day’s talk focused on when Fox News called Arizona in favor of Joe Biden, a move that sealed Donald Trump’s election night loss to the 46th president.
Ivanka Trump was asked about her own advice to the president as the Trump campaign challenged the network’s appeal, telling the committee, “I don’t know if I had a clear idea of what he should say in this circumstance. The results were always counted.
His remark exposed the panic behind the Trump campaign which was beginning to accept (with the exception of Mr. Trump himself) that the election was ending in defeat.
The Trump campaign angrily demanded that Fox withdraw its Arizona call as election night dragged on, both in public comments from surrogates and privately in conversations with leaders. But the appeal was never retracted, and Arizona’s official results, even after an audit, reflected Fox’s appeal.
As the January 6 committee testimony unfolds, it has become clear that Mr. Trump ignored the advice of lawyers, campaign officials and his own family to listen instead to Rudy Giuliani, his longtime personal lawyer, who reportedly urged him to declare victory after it became clear he would not win the election. Some testimony from Monday’s hearing indicates that Mr. Giuliani gave this advice under the influence of alcohol.
Ivanka Trump’s refusal to accept the lies spread by Mr. Trump’s team after the 2020 election, which included, but were by no means limited to insisting that Venezuelan socialist Hugo Chavez, who has since died long, was behind efforts to rob the president of victory, was no surprise on Monday.
The president’s daughter made embarrassing headlines for her father last week after the committee’s first public hearing on Jan. 6 with testimony before the panel that showed how she accepted the attorney general’s explanation that the fraud could not have changed the election results.
