Dec. 19 (UPI) — The House select committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, released an executive summary Monday that highlighted several observations, including that Ivanka Trump was not “forthcoming” with the panel.
The summary was released as the committee voted unanimously to recommend former President Donald Trump for four criminal charges, including inciting an insurrection, to the U.S. Justice Department for prosecution.
Both major developments came ahead of the final report expected to be released by the lawmakers Wednesday. The 154-page summary distributed Monday includes excerpts from the final report.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, acknowledged to the committee that she agreed with key facts, including former Attorney General William Barr‘s statements that there was no evidence of sufficient fraud to overturn the election, and that Trump watched the violence on television as it was occurring.
She also acknowledged to the committee that the president and others are bound by the rulings of the courts and the rule of law, and that her father pressured former Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 regarding his authority at the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes.
However, the committee wrote that Ivanka Trump “was not as forthcoming” as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others about President Trump’s conduct.
“Indeed, Ivanka Trump’s Chief of Staff Julie Radford had a more specific recollection of Ivanka Trump’s actions and statements,” the summary reads.
According to the summary, Ivanka Trump also recounted to her chief of staff that her father had referred to Pence with profanity for refusing to overturn the election.
The summary revealed 17 key findings of the committee including that the former president acted “corruptly” by pressuring Pence to overturn the results of the election.
Former White House officials highlighted by the committee included former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, whose testimony was described as seeming “evasive as if she was testifying from preprepared talking points,” as well as Trump adviser Hope Hicks.
“In several circumstances, the committee has found that less-senior White House aides had significantly better recollection of events than senior staff purported to have,” the summary reads.
The summary also revealed that, in his testimony, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani admitted during his deposition that his repeated claims that Dominion voting machines had changed votes from Trump to Joe Biden were false.
“Other Trump lawyers and supporters Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Phil Waldron and Michael Flynn all invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the Select Committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen,” according to the summary.
In its summary, the committee said that concerns were raised early on in the investigation including the realization that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had made a number of intentionally false statements in his 2021 book, The Chief’s Chief.
“The Select Committee also has concerns regarding certain other witnesses, including those who still rely for their income or employment by organizations linked to President Trump, such as the America First Policy Institute,” the summary reads.
“Certain witnesses and lawyers were unnecessarily combative, answered hundreds of questions with variants of ‘I do not recall’ in circumstances where that answer seemed unbelievable, appeared to testify from lawyer-written talking points rather than their own recollections, provided highly questionable rationalizations or otherwise resisted telling the truth.”
In the summary, the panel members wrote that the professional staff for the Trump campaign began to view Giuliani as “unhinged,” which caused multiple law firms to quit working for the president.
The committee noted that the dozens of witnesses in its 10 hearings that led to its conclusions were “almost entirely Republican” with just one Democrat, Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
Through the hearings, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican, was also revealed to have been “personally involved in the acts and circumstances” on Jan. 6 and “would be one of the targets of the investigation.”
The committee also scolded House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy for removing his five Republican appointments to the committee as it was established — which led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to appoint Rep. Adam Kinzinger to the panel.
