Ivanka Trump could ‘complete the portrait’ in Jan. 6 probe: Rep. Jamie Raskin
Former president Donald Trump was "psychologically out of control" on Jan. 6, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.
Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday night, Raskin was asked about the committee's letter requesting testimony from former first daughter Ivanka Trump.
"We’re closing in on the target," Raskin said, adding that it's been "a very good week" for the committee, and pointing to the Supreme Court's decision rejecting former president Trump's bid to keep White House Jan. 6 records secret.
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"We're really developing a fine-grain portrait of what happened on that day," he said. "Ivanka Trump is a critical figure because she was there in the morning, we believe she was there when Trump was still trying to twist (vice president) Mike Pence's arm — remember the 'you will go down in history as a patriot or a p*ssy' overture towards him. And she was also a key figure in trying to pull Trump back, apparently. So she could really perhaps complete the portrait of what happened on Jan. 6 for us."
Raskin said Ivanka Trump's pleas to her father were among multiple "successive entreaties" made directly to the former president, urging him to "call off the dogs and get everyone to go home."
"I think Ivanka Trump figures highly now in this, because people thought that he might listen to her," Raskin said. "But what we’re getting is a very clear sense that the people in the media entourage of Donald Trump knew what a terrible thing this violence was — that it was illegal, it was unlawful, it was unconstitutional. We believe the White House counsel was rendering advice to that effect, and yet Trump continued to try to march everybody off the plank."
Raskin said Trump had been "setting in motion a political coup," and then apparently "helped to activate" extremist groups, pointing to the indictment of 11 members of the Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy last week.
"But also he had been activating this huge demonstration of tens of thousands of people to become a mob, by essentially siccing them on Mike Pence," Raskin said, referring to Trump's Stop the Steal rally that preceded the insurrection.
"And we have statements from a lot of people who were in the demonstration, saying they were waiting to hear what Mike Pence would do, and when they got the message that he was not going to cooperate and bow down to the president, at that point all bets were off, and they decided to tear up the place," Raskin said.
He added that there are "different ways of interpreting" some of the details revealed in the committee's letter to Ivanka Trump.
"Obviously there were people participating in this political effort up until the point when everything got really deranged and insane, but it's also suggestive of the possibility that there were people who felt like they had to try to contain and control Donald Trump, and psychologically he was out of control, and they were looking at ways to rein him back in," Raskin said.
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