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      US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka Trump

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      US Capitol attack panel discusses subpoena for Ivanka TrumpHouse select committee is considering best way to get evidence from ex-president’s daughter about his efforts to cling to power The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is considering issuing a subpoena to Ivanka Trump to force her cooperation with the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to return himself to power on 6 January, according to a source familiar with the matter.Any move to subpoena Ivanka Trump and, for the first time, force a member of Trump’s own family to testify against him, would mark a dramatic escalation in the 6 January inquiry that could amount to a treacherous legal and political moment for the former president. Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panelRead moreThe panel is not expected to take the crucial step for the time being, the source said, and the prospect of a subpoena to the former president’s daughter emerged in discussions about what options remained available after she appeared to refuse a request for voluntary cooperation.But the fact that members on the select committee have started to discuss a subpoena suggests they believe it may ultimately take such a measure – and the threat of prosecution should she defy it – to ensure her appearance at a deposition on Capitol Hill.The select committee did not address a possible subpoena for Ivanka Trump at a closed-door meeting last Friday, and the panel wants to give her a reasonable window of opportunity to engage with the investigation before moving to force her cooperation, the source said.The panel would also have to formally vote to move ahead with such a measure, the source said, and Thompson would probably inform the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, of the decision before formally authorizing a subpoena to the former president’s daughter.But members on the select committee are not confident that Ivanka Trump would appear on her own volition, the source said, and the discussion about a subpoena reflected how important they consider her insight into whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in an 11-page letter requesting her voluntary cooperation last month that the panel wanted to ask about Trump’s plan to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory to return himself to office.Ivanka Trump was close to the former president in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, Thompson said, and appeared to have learned the plan to have the then vice-president, Mike Pence, refuse to certify Biden’s election win in certain states was possibly unlawful.“The committee has information suggesting that President Trump’s White House counsel may have concluded that the actions President Trump directed Vice-President Pence to take would … otherwise be illegal. Did you discuss these issues?” the letter said.The letter added House investigators had additional questions about whether Ivanka Trump could say whether the former president had been told that such an action might be unlawful, and yet nonetheless persisted in pressuring Pence to reinstall him for a second term.Thompson also said in the letter that the panel wanted to learn more about Trump’s indifference to the insurrection, and discussions inside the White House about his tweet castigating Pence for not adopting his plan as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in his name.The letter said a persistent question for Ivanka Trump – who White House aides thought had the best chance of persuading the former president to condemn the rioters – was what she did about the situation and why her father did not call off the rioters in a White House address.The select committee said in the letter that they also wanted to ask her about what she knew with regard to the long delay in deploying the national guard to the Capitol, which allowed the insurrection to overwhelm law enforcement into the afternoon of 6 January.Thompson said that House investigators were curious why there appeared to have been no evidence that Trump issued any order to request the national guard, or called the justice department to request the deployment of personnel to the Capitol.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on whether the panel was considering a subpoena for Ivanka Trump or the content of the Friday meeting. Neither a spokesperson for the former president nor Ivanka Trump responded to requests for comment.But Ivanka Trump has appeared to suggest she is not prepared to appear voluntarily, and said in a statement at the time of the letter requesting voluntary cooperation that “as the committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally”.TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Ivanka Trump asked to cooperate with Capitol attack committee

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      Ivanka Trump asked to cooperate with Capitol attack committeeInvestigators seek testimony from former first daughter, with panel increasingly focused on Donald Trump’s inner circle The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is asking Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the former president, to appear for a voluntary deposition to answer questions about Donald Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.Biden warns Russia will ‘pay a heavy price’ if Putin launches Ukraine invasion – liveRead moreThe move by the panel marks an aggressive new phase in its inquiry into the 6 January insurrection, as House investigators seek for the first time testimony from a member of the Trump family about potential criminality on the part of the former president.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, said in an 11-page letter to Ivanka Trump that the panel wanted to ask about Trump’s plan to stop the certification, and his response to the Capitol attack, including delays to deploying the national guard.Ivanka Trump was a senior adviser to her father during her presidency, as was her husband Jared Kushner. The two were seen as a power couple very close to the inner workings of the Trump White House.The questions to Ivanka appear directed at a key issue: whether her father oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January that also involved obstructing a congressional proceeding – a crime.The letter said that the panel first wanted to question Ivanka Trump about what she recalled of a heated Oval Office meeting on the morning of the 6 January insurrection when the former president was trying to co-opt Mike Pence into rejecting Biden’s win.The former president was on the phone with the then vice-president in an Oval Office meeting with Ivanka and Keith Kellogg, a top Pence aide, the letter said. When Pence demurred on the former president’s repeated request, Ivanka turned to Kellogg and said Pence was “a good man”.Thompson said in the letter that the panel wanted to learn more about that exchange with Pence she heard, as well as other conversations about impeding the electoral count at the joint session of Congress on 6 January that she may have witnessed or participated in.“The committee has information suggesting that President Trump’s White House counsel may have concluded that the actions President Trump directed Vice-President Pence to take would … otherwise be illegal. Did you discuss these issues?” the letter said.Thompson added House investigators had additional questions about whether Trump could shed light on whether the former president had been told that such an action might be unlawful, and yet nonetheless persisted in pressuring Pence to reinstall him for a second term.The letter said the select committee was also interested in learning more from Trump about her father’s response to the Capitol attack on 6 January, and discussions inside the White House about the former president’s tweet castigating Pence for not adopting his plan.Thompson said the nagging question for Ivanka Trump – who White House aides thought had the best chance of having the former president condemn the rioters – was what she did about the situation and why her father did not call off the rioters in a White House address.The select committee said in the letter that they also wanted to ask her about what she knew with regard to the long delay in deploying the national guard to the Capitol, which allowed the insurrection to overwhelm law enforcement into the afternoon of 6 January.Thompson said that House investigators were curious why there appeared to have been no evidence that Trump issued any order to request the national guard, or called the justice department to request the deployment of personnel to the Capitol.Speaking to the Guardian and a small group of reporters on Thursday, the chairman of the select committee said that the immediate focus for the investigation was on the former president’s daughter and not subpoenas to Republican members of Congress.Thompson said the panel would be “inviting some people to come and talk to us. Not lawmakers right now. Ivanka Trump.”The letter comes after the US supreme court, in another blow to the former president, late on Wednesday rejected his request to block the release of more than 700 of the most sensitive of White House documents he had tried to hide from the select committee.The former president’s defeat means those documents – including presidential diaries, notes and memos from the files of top aides including the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – that could shed light on the Capitol attack can now be transferred to Congress.TopicsUS Capitol attackIvanka TrumpUS politicsDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Surprised that Ivanka was almost head of the World Bank? You shouldn’t be | Arwa Mahdawi

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      OpinionIvanka TrumpSurprised that Ivanka Trump was almost head of the World Bank? You shouldn’t beArwa MahdawiDonald Trump wanting his daughter to have the top job at the World Bank is no great surprise. What intrigues me is the thought of Steven Mnuchin blocking it Tue 12 Oct 2021 11.34 EDTLast modified on Tue 12 Oct 2021 14.01 EDTIt’s no secret that Donald Trump has something of a soft spot for his eldest daughter, Ivanka. He’s constantly tooting her horn and gushing over her talents. Not only does Ivanka have a “very nice figure”, Trump has boasted, but “she’s very good with numbers”. She’s so good at all that numbers stuff that the former president even considered her for the top job at the World Bank in 2019. And that wasn’t just a fleeting fantasy, either; according to a recent report by the Intercept, Ivanka’s nomination for World Bank president “came incredibly close to happening”. The reason it didn’t is that Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, intervened. Which, by the way is a rather different story from the one Ivanka tells. The former first daughter has said she passed on the job because she was very happy with the high-powered White House position she’d appointed herself to.I can’t say I’m surprised that Ivanka was a stone’s throw away from a(nother) prestigious job she was laughably unqualified for. What does intrigue me is why Mnuchin might have blocked her nomination. Trump has a knack of surrounding himself with sycophants who do his bidding; what could have prompted Mnuchin to break ranks? Could it possibly be that the guy finds brazen nepotism distasteful? Alas, it seems unlikely, considering he’s a product of it himself. Mnuchin’s first job out of Yale was at Goldman Sachs, where his dad just happened to be a general partner. According to a New York magazine profile, Mnuchin’s colleagues at Goldman Sachs didn’t consider him “especially book smart”, but that didn’t stop him becoming partner himself. The same profile notes that his elevation to partner came at the expense of an African American trader from a working-class background who struck one colleague as being “much smarter than Steven” and having “accomplished a lot more”. I don’t know how fair that profile is, but I’d bet both my kidneys that Mnuchin isn’t someone who stays awake at night fretting about nepotism.So perhaps Mnuchin was afraid Ivanka’s appointment might be unethical or make the US look ridiculous? Again, these theories seem unlikely. Mnuchin and his (third) wife, the Scottish actor Louise Linton, don’t seem particularly bothered by ethics or looking ridiculous. Mnuchin, after all, is nicknamed the “foreclosure king” because he made a ton of money evicting elderly people from their homes. Linton, meanwhile, is notorious for having written a “white saviour” memoir full of dubious claims. The pair haven’t exactly kept a low profile since getting together. Remember when the lovebirds did a very weird supervillain-style photoshoot with a sheet of new dollar bills? Not exactly something someone concerned about optics might do. Then there was the time they took a government plane to see a solar eclipse in Kentucky. Linton posted the trip on Instagram and hashtagged all the designer labels she was wearing: “#rolandmouret pants”, “#tomford sunnies”, “#hermesscarf”, “#valentinorockstudheels”. The whole thing was #inverybadtaste.The pair haven’t exactly tried to tone it down since then. Linton recently made a movie called Me You Madness where she plays a “materialistic, narcissistic, self-absorbed misanthrope” who hates commercial air travel, loves high fashion and eats men for fun. It also contains spider sex. Mnuchin has been very supportive of the movie, calling the escapades of a greedy sociopath “highly entertaining”. Again, he doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who cares what other people think. Rather, he seems like the sort of guy who actively supports narcissistic blonds (Linton looks quite a bit like Ivanka) with white saviour complexes and enormous egos doing whatever the hell they like. If he blocked Ivanka’s nomination then I’ll once again wager my kidneys that it wasn’t for the common good, but it was somehow for his own good. After all, nepotism simply isn’t a problem for people like Mnuchin. It’s just the way the world works.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsIvanka TrumpOpinionDonald TrumpUS politicsWorld BankEconomicsGlobal economycommentReuse this content More

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      Jared Kushner's hidden genius? To make terrible decisions – yet keep failing upwards | Arwa Mahdawi

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      OpinionJared KushnerJared Kushner’s hidden genius? To make terrible decisions – yet keep failing upwardsArwa MahdawiDonald Trump’s son-in-law has decided to step away from politics and launch an investment firm. No doubt it will be a roaring success, whatever he does Wed 4 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTHaving selflessly served the public for four long years, Jared Kushner has decided it’s time to step away from politics and apply his unique talents elsewhere. According to mysterious sources said to be “familiar with the plan”, Kushner is preparing to launch a Miami-based investment firm called Affinity Partners. The exact nature of the firm is unclear; however, it will reportedly have an office in Israel, which will pursue investments connecting Israel’s economy with India, north Africa and the Gulf. Now that he has oh-so-successfully made peace in the Middle East, Kushner appears to have decided he deserves to make a little profit.It must have been hard for Kushner, who former ambassador Nikki Haley once described as a “hidden genius that no one understands”, to give up his political career. Still, the decision was probably made easier by the fact that said “career” was simply a cushy “senior adviser” job with his father-in-law, and that ended when Donald Trump lost the election. Since then, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, have been spending their days scooping up Miami mansions. One presumes the pair haven’t exactly been inundated with invitations to join the Biden White House, so the fact that the likes of Reuters are running headlines announcing Kushner is “to leave politics” is quite the PR victory on his part.That’s not Kushner’s only victory. While he might have the charisma of a soggy tissue, Mr Ivanka Trump seems to have a knack for failing upwards. In 2007, for example, a 26-year-old Kushner urged his family’s real estate company to pay a then-record $1.8bn to purchase 666 Fifth Avenue, a skyscraper in Manhattan. This turned out to be a terrible decision. It might have had devastating financial consequences for the Kushner family had it not been for a sudden stroke of luck: in 2018, in the middle of Trump’s presidency, a Canadian asset-management company, Brookfield Asset Management, agreed to take a 99-year lease on the building, paying a huge amount of rent upfront. Funnily enough, the Qatar Investment Authority was a major investor in Brookfield and, at the time, Kushner was backing a blockade on the Gulf kingdom. This was all a complete coincidence, and there was no intention of persuading Kushner to reverse his support for the blockade, Qatar has stressed. And, to be fair, the blockade wasn’t lifted until this year. Still, if Kushner keeps running into coincidences like that one imagines his investment firm will do very well indeed.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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      Secret Service extension for Trump’s adult children cost $140,000 in a month

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      Donald Trump’s adult children reportedly cost taxpayers $140,000 in Secret Service security in the month after the clan’s patriarch left the White House in January.Ordinarily, family members of a president lose their security detail when they leave office. But in the case of the four Trump siblings and two of their spouses, the former president issued a directive to extend post-presidency protections by six months.The costs, obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics, do not include security protections at Trump properties in New Jersey, Palm Beach and Briarcliff, New York. With those factored in, the total would likely be far higher, according to the group.According to the watchdog, records reveal that the Trump children maintained a “breakneck speed of travel, and racked up significant hotel and transportation bills for the Secret Service”. Transport costs alone amounted to $52,296.75, and hotel costs totaled at least $88,678.39.If that schedule is maintained, the group estimates, post-presidency protection costs could nearly $1m. The group has previously calculated that the Trump family made 12 times as many trips in three years as the Obamas made in seven.The arrangements, however, are not unique: former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W Bush also sought protection extensions, though in the case of Clinton and Obama their children were by then at, or close to, college-age.The Washington Post, which reported on Trump’s directive in January, found that extensions to Secret Service protections were also extended to former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien.Under federal law, Trump and his wife Melania are entitled to protection for their lifetime; their teenage son Barron receives his until he turns 16.The watchdog found that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump went from their jobs at the White House to a 10-day vacation in Utah, racking up hotel costs of $62,599. After a month in Miami, they stayed at Trump’s Bedminster golf property for three days in late February.Eric and Lara Trump spent much of February at Trump’s Briarcliff property, interspersed with trips to New York, Miami and Palm Beach, at a cost of $12,742.Donald Trump Jr also spent time in New York City, on Long Island, and in upstate New York, racking up bills of $13,337.But Citizens for Ethics said the Secret Service did not provide records of spending at Trump businesses.“While it may be tempting to put the story of the Trump family’s profiteering in the past, we cannot until they have actually stopped directing taxpayer money into their own bank accounts,” the group said. More

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      Ivanka Trump, crusading criminal justice reformer? Pull the other one | Arwa Mahdawi

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      [embedded content]
      Ivanka wants to be the next Kim Kardashian
      Ivanka Trump is done empowering women. For years the heiress styled herself as a sort of Susan B Anthony in stilettos, working tirelessly to advance women’s rights. That mission has apparently been accomplished, and Ivanka has now moved on to a new passion project: criminals.
      Ivanka spent her final hours in the White House frantically working with her daddy to grant pardons and commutations to 143 people. Some of those people had been locked up for decades for nonviolent drug offenses; many others, however, were Trump cronies and white-collar crooks. According to a new report from Axios, Ivanka wasn’t just helping these people out of the goodness of her heart; it was a calculated strategy. Ivanka apparently plans to use the platform of criminal justice reform to rehabilitate her image and re-emerge into public life.
      Tying her brand to criminal justice reform, which is a bipartisan issue, is a savvy move by Ivanka. It gives her a way of worming herself back into liberals’ good books without alienating conservatives. It also doesn’t hurt that criminal justice reform has become rather glamorous. Over the last few years big-name celebrities like Kevin Hart, Jay-Z and Meek Mill have spoken out on the issue. And Kim Kardashian, of course, has made criminal justice reform her life’s work. (Although she still finds time to hawk shapewear and promote dubious diet products.)
      And then there’s the fact that, unlike most things she sets her sights on, crime is something Ivanka appears eminently qualified to speak out on. There is, after all, a convicted felon in the family: her father-in-law, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to tax evasion and intimidating a witness (he hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, videotaped it, then sent the video to his sister to try to stop him testifying). Kushner, of course, got a pardon from Trump.
      Criminal justice reform may theoretically be a bipartisan issue, but it’s important to note that there are very different interpretations of what that reform looks like in practice. For the left it means things like addressing structural racism and reallocating funding from police departments to community support. For the right it often seems to mean cutting costs by reducing the number of people in physical jails while finding new ways to police people. Ways which, conveniently enough, make private corporations and tech companies a lot of money. In 2018, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, warned that many recent criminal justice reforms contain the seeds of a frightening system of “e-carceration”.
      Replacing cash bail with expensive ankle monitoring devices is one example of this. “Many reformers rightly point out that an ankle bracelet is preferable to a prison cell,” Alexander wrote. “Yet I find it difficult to call this progress. As I see it, digital prisons are to mass incarceration what Jim Crow was to slavery.”
      As for Ivanka’s approach to criminal justice reform? One imagines that, just like her approach to women’s empowerment, it will be vacuous and self-serving. Still, she may need to serve herself sooner rather than later: the Trump Organization is facing a number of legal issues. One imagines a get-out-of-jail-free card would be very useful.
      Man who talks a lot of rubbish thinks women talk too much
      Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee, reckons women talk too much and cause meetings to “drag on”. When asked why he thinks that he replied: “I don’t talk to women that much these days, so I don’t know.” Seems like he doesn’t know a lot of things: while women are often stereotyped as chatty plenty of research shows men are by far the more garrulous sex in meetings and public forums.
      Rashida Tlaib, AOC and the power of vulnerability
      Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered emotional speeches about the US Capitol attack this week. These speeches weren’t just powerful; in many ways they were historic. As Moira Donegan wrote: “Vulnerability and power do not often go together, and certainly not in female politicians.” However, by opening up about her trauma, “AOC demonstrated that she was unwilling to concede that female vulnerability is incompatible with the dignity of power. Refusing to separate those two was a demonstration of her feminist vision, a gesture at what an authentic kind of power might look like.”
      ‘Sew bros’: the wholesome rise of men who stitch
      George Clooney is one of them: he recently revealed he’s been sewing clothes for his kids during lockdown.
      Mike Pence is starting a podcast to share good news about conservatism
      Couldn’t he just take up sewing instead?
      New Zealand’s Māori foreign minister is the perfect diplomat
      Nanaia Mahuta is impossible to miss: she’s the first woman to sit in the country’s parliament wearing a moko kauae, an ancient Māori tattoo form. But it’s not just her tattoo that sets her apart. Morgan Godfery argues that, under Mahuta’s ministership, New Zealand’s commitment to prioritizing trading arrangements over global human rights issues may be changing.
      French 106-year-old pianist to release sixth album
      Colette Maze began playing the piano at age four to find warmth absent in her strict upbringing: she’s been going strong ever since and has a new album out in April.
      US toddler to release debut album recorded in the womb
      At the other end of the age spectrum a Brooklyn toddler is about to release her debut album, the world’s first LP made from sounds inside the womb.
      The week in rodent-archy
      Naked mole rats, I’m sorry to say, are absolutely hideous. Turns out they’re also pretty xenophobic. Scientists have discovered that naked mole rats speak in accents unique to their colonies and ignore rodents from different colonies. The accent of each colony is determined by the queen but can change if she is overthrown. This may be the first time that cultural transmission of dialect has been seen in small rodents and the study is causing quite a stir in the naked mole rat community. More

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      'I like Ivanka': Marco Rubio sweats over rumoured Trump Senate challenge

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      The last time Marco Rubio looked this uncomfortable in the national spotlight, he was stuck on robotic repeat in a Republican debate, being pummelled by Chris Christie.Or maybe it was when he lunged for a bottle of water as he sweated his way through a response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, back in 2013.Either way, on Sunday morning Florida’s senior Republican senator squirmed again as he was grilled on the possibility of a primary challenge by Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s oldest daughter, in 2022.“How seriously do you take Ivanka Trump as a potential opponent?” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked, citing speculation over the former “first daughter’s” personal political ambitions following her purchase of property in Miami with her husband, Jared Kushner.“Well, I, I, I don’t really get into the parlour games of Washington,” Rubio replied, clearly wishing his potential challenger was called anything other than Trump.“When you decide to run for re-election in a state like Florida, you have to be prepared for a competitive race, you run it like a competitive race, so that’s what I’m preparing to run, a very competitive race against a tough opponent.“I don’t own the Senate seat, it doesn’t belong to me. If I want to be back in the US Senate I have to earn that every six years.”Wallace pressed on, attempting to get the floundering Rubio, who has something of a love-hate relationship with Donald Trump, to at least acknowledge the name of his possible challenger.“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US…” Rubio said, trailing off then pivoting swiftly to a list of his perceived successes “for the people of Florida” since he was elected in 2010.The interview ended soon after, a relieved Rubio able to avoid any further reference to his new Miami neighbour.Scholars of Rubio’s previous encounters with Ivanka Trump will have noted this was far from his first moment of awkwardness. In June 2017 he was photographed trying and failing to give her a hug in Washington, the image inevitably going viral.Rubio tried to make light of that episode, promising a full investigation by the Senate intelligence committee into why it was “blowing up Twitter”.In 2016, Rubio ran for the Republican presidential nomination ultimately won by Donald Trump. The senator squared up to the property developer, evidently unfamiliar with the old political saw, variously and wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw, about why it is never a good idea to wrestle with a pig.You both get dirty, the saying goes, but the pig likes it. Rubio and Trump ended up exchanging insults about the size of their genitals.Rubio’s last robust primary was an all-round chastening experience. Not only did he fail to make much of a mark but during a campaign event in Iowa, the senator also beaned a small child with a football. More