Amid the chaos of January 6, 2021, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called Ivanka Trump, urging her to tell her father, then-President Donald Trump, to take more aggressive action to stop the riot.
The testimony is part of a trove of transcripts released Friday by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
During Ivanka Trump’s questioning, in which she spoke about how she participated in helping her father to condemn the violence at the Capitol, it was revealed that Collins had called Trump at 3:29 p.m. local time on January 6, moments after her father had released a tweet asking for “everyone at the US Capitol to remain peaceful.”
After being asked whether she recalls the phone call, Trump responds by saying she remembers.
“It was a brief conversation,” Ivanka Trump says, according to the transcript. “I recall her saying that the president needed to engage in stopping what was happening, generally speaking, echoing the sentiment of many, that we should all be doing everything that we can.”
Ivanka continued: “I told her that the president had just issued a second tweet; I believe I told her. I know I sent it to her — or I think I sent it to her. So it was a short conversation, but I understood why she was calling me, and I agreed with her sentiment.”
The call was 18 seconds long, according to phone records cited by the January 6 committee. Still, after the call, Collins texted Ivanka Trump: “The president needs to put out a very strong tweet telling people to go home and stop the violence now.”
The call from Collins is one of a few calls that Ivanka Trump received during the riot. Ivanka Trump also confirmed that Sen. Lindsey Graham called her from the Capitol building as events unfolded. Trump said she did not take the call, instead passing the phone to White House senior advisor Eric Herschmann.
Trump’s testimony also includes dozens of instances of her saying she cannot recollect details of what transpired on January 6. For example, she did not recall tweets that her father sent out condemning Vice President Mike Pence’s participation in certifying the election.
Ivanka Trump did, however, remember a phone call between Pence and her father in the Oval Office the morning of Jan. 6, which she described as “heated.”
The January 6 committee previously took aim at Ivanka Trump’s testimony in the executive summary of its report, released Monday, writing that she was not “entirely frank or forthcoming” when speaking to them.
Ivanka Trump also spoke about her feelings seeing the riot transpire on television, saying it was the “context” she needed to understand: “something was transpiring that, you know, should not be happening.”
On Thursday, the January 6 committee released its final report. which included details about how much Donald Trump raised in donations before the riot, worried texts between secret service agents, and a voicemail gaffe from lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The report also detailed Ivanka Trump imploring her father to quell the violence, noting that she appeared”visibly upset” after her father refused to listen to her.
