7.8 “Stay Peaceful!”

¶No one was getting through to the President.

¶So Herschmann went to Ivanka Trump’s office, hoping she would come to the dining room and be “a calming influence” on her father.¹⁹⁹¹⁹⁹ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Eric Herschmann, (Apr. 6, 2022), p. 72. Herschmann “just sort of barged in” and told her to turn on the television.²⁰⁰²⁰⁰ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), p. 68; see also Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Eric Herschmann, (Apr. 6, 2022), pp. 68–69. After taking in a few of the violent scenes together, Herschmann and Ivanka Trump left the room and walked to the dining room, where her father was holed up.²⁰¹²⁰¹ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), p. 70.

¶At 2:38 p.m., the President issued a tweet:²⁰²²⁰² Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Eric Herschmann, (Apr. 6, 2022), p. 69 (“And she was in there for a few minutes, and then came out and he had issued a tweet.”); Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), p. 64 (“Within, I believe, a few minutes he had issued that—he put out that tweet, a version of that tweet.”).Show full note

Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!²⁰³²⁰³ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, Jan. 6, 2021 2:38 p.m. ET, available at https://www.thetrumparchive.com/?searchbox=%22please+support+our%22 (archived).

¶Ivanka Trump told the Select Committee that the President “did not push back on [her] suggestion” to issue the tweet, and that it was either she or President Trump himself who suggested the last line, “Stay peaceful!”²⁰⁴²⁰⁴ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), pp. 87–89. She confirmed there may have been some tweaking of the wording.²⁰⁵²⁰⁵ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), p. 88. McEnany, who was in the room at the time, wrote in her notes that “I say add ‘we support PEACEFUL protest.’ Ivanka add stay peaceful! Instead.”²⁰⁶²⁰⁶ Documents on file with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Kayleigh McEnany Production), KMC_000000724, (January 6, 2021, Kayleigh McEnany Notes); Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Kayleigh McEnany, (Jan. 12, 2022), p. 185. To the Select Committee, McEnany echoed Ivanka Trump that the President wasn’t resistant in any way to putting out the message.²⁰⁷²⁰⁷ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), pp. 88–89; Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Kayleigh McEnany, (Jan. 12, 2022), p. 185.

¶Sarah Matthews testifies at a January 6th Select Committee hearing. (Photo by House Creative Services)

¶But in private, McEnany told a different story to her deputy Sarah Matthews.

¶Testimony footage of former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany is played during a January 6th Select Committee hearing. (Photo by Pool/Getty Images)

¶Back in the White House press office, Matthews told McEnany that the tweet did not go far enough in condemning the violence.²⁰⁸²⁰⁸ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (July 21, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6th. McEnany—noting that other staffers in the room were distracted—said “in a hushed tone . . . that the President did not want to include any sort of mention of peace in that tweet.”²⁰⁹²⁰⁹ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (July 21, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6th.

¶That took “some convincing on their part,” McEnany said, and “it wasn’t until Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase ‘Stay peaceful!’ that he finally agreed to include it.”²¹⁰²¹⁰ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (July 21, 2022), available at https://www.govinfo.gov/committee/house-january6th.

¶Ivanka Trump repeatedly returned to the dining room to counsel her father throughout the day. It has been reported that each time Ivanka Trump “thought she had made headway” with her father, Meadows would call her “to say the [P]resident still needed more persuading”—a cycle that repeated itself over “several hours” that afternoon.²¹¹²¹¹ Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year (New York: Penguin, 2021), p. 474. After one such trip, Ivanka Trump told the Select Committee she went to her husband’s office next door because she needed to “regroup” and collect herself.²¹²²¹² Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Ivanka Trump, (Apr. 5, 2022), p. 91.

¶Several witnesses corroborated pieces of this account. General Kellogg said he saw Ivanka Trump coming and going from the dining room at least twice that afternoon.²¹³²¹³ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Keith Kellogg, Jr., (Dec. 14, 2021), p 141. Hutchinson said that it was “several times.”²¹⁴²¹⁴ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Transcribed Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (Feb. 23, 2022), p. 170. Once, Ivanka Trump reportedly left her father with a look on her face as if “[s]he had just had a tough conversation.”²¹⁵²¹⁵ Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), p. 248. Radford, Ivanka Trump’s Chief of Staff, saw that she was “[v]isibly upset” but continued going “down there when people were asking her to be down there and trying to get action taken.”²¹⁶²¹⁶ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Julie Radford, (May 24, 2022), p. 32.

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¶Radford told the Select Committee that Ivanka Trump believed that “[s]omething should be said or put out that was even stronger.”²¹⁷²¹⁷ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Deposition of Julie Radford, (May 24, 2022), p. 30.

¶Hutchinson, too, recalled Ivanka Trump dropping by Meadows’s office alongside Cipollone and talking about trying to convince her father to say something “more direct than he had wanted to at that time and throughout the afternoon.”²¹⁸²¹⁸ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), p. 37; Hutchinson recalls that Meadows, Herschmann, Ivanka Trump, and others would come and go from the Chief of Staff’s office at intervals throughout the afternoon. “I don’t know if it was for a breather or to have a conversation away from the dining room,” she said. Id., at 31.Show full note

¶“I remember her saying at various points,” Hutchinson said, “she wanted her dad to send them home. She wanted her dad to tell them to go home peacefully, and she wanted to include language that he necessarily wasn’t on board with at the time.”²¹⁹²¹⁹ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Continued Interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, (June 20, 2022), p. 38.