Tim O’Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, has suggested the former president’s older daughter had a “bad feeling” about the pressure her father was putting on Mike Pence in the days leading up to 6 January.
Clips of Ivanka Trump’s testimony have been played at the public hearings into the Capitol riot, which have also heard that Mr Trump was told repeatedly his scheme to get Vice President Pence to send back electors to the states – in the hope of overturning the election result – was illegal.
MSNBC host Alex Witt asked Mr O’Brien: “Do you get a sense from her testimony that Ivanka had a bad feeling about January 6th, even before the rally at the ellipse?”
Mr O’Brien replied: “Absolutely.”
“We know from other accounts of what she did that day that she honoured the fact that Mike Pence was resisting Donald Trump’s pressure to decertify the electoral results on Jan 6 at the Capitol. And then she obviously was in the Oval Office with several other campaign advisers, including lawyers, who heard him swearing at Mike Pence, who heard him grow increasingly angry at Mike Pence, because Mike Pence wouldn’t do a Donald Trump wanted him to do, which was to break the law,” he explained.
“What is significant is what we have learned in the hearings thus far, is that Donald Trump at that point knew it was illegal,” Mr O’Brien elaborated. “[John] Eastman had told him it was illegal. They had also, there are other people in the White House who said that the plan was ‘nutty’. It was crazy. So it was not only lacking in visibility, it was illegal, and yet he continues to pressure Mike Pence, to break the law and he did so in front of a number of witnesses including his daughter.”
Ms Trump testified that she heard her father in a “pretty heated” phone conversation with Mr Pence. Photos have emerged of much of the Trump family in the Oval Office on the morning of 6 January 2021, ahead of the rally on the Ellipse that preceded the Capitol riot.
Members of staff close to Mr Trump and his daughter — his “body man” Nick Luna, and her chief of staff, Julie Radford — claim the then-president called his loyal vice president a “wimp” and a “p***y”.
Since the hearing, Mr Trump has denied calling Mr Pence a wimp, before going on to say his vice president didn’t have enough courage to do what he was being asked.
