Ivanka Trump's chief of staff testified to the names that the former president called Mike Pence during a phone call trying to have the election overturned.
Ivanka Trump’s former Chief of Staff Julie Radford testified that former President Donald Trump called then-Vice President Mike Pence the “p-word” during a call, telling him to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election, in a pre-recorded deposition shown during the third hearing by the Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. “Her dad had just had an upsetting conversation with the vice president,” Radford said, before saying that Ivanka told her what Donald had called the Vice President.
Donald Trump continued to pressure Mike Pence leading up to the Joint Session of Congress. On January 6, Trump called Pence.
Here's what the President family members and staff said about that call:
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 16, 2022
In her deposition, Ivanka explained what she heard when she walked in on her dad before Pence was set to certify the results of the election. “When I entered the office the second time, he was on a telephone with who I later found out to be the vice president,” Ivanka said in her deposition. “The conversation was pretty heated.”
The former senior advisor said that she hadn’t heard that type of conversation between her dad and Pence before. “It was a different tone than I’d heard [Donald] take with the vice president before,” she said. The president’s former assistant Nicholas Luna also said that he heard Trump call Pence a “wimp” in a pre-recorded deposition.
Pence’s former counsel Greg Jacob testified to what the vice president’s demeanor was after the call. “When he came back into the room, I’d say that he was steely, determined, grim,” he said.
During the third hearing, it was also revealed just how close the rioters invading the Capitol came to Pence, with Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) saying that the rioters who invaded the building managed to come within about 40 feet of the vice president. Jacob also said that Pence refused the Secret Service’s offer to drive him away from the secure location because he wanted to make sure that he got the chance to certify the results. “He was determined that we would complete the work that we had set out to do that day—that it was his Constitutional duty to see through, and the rioters who had breached the Capitol would not have the satisfaction of disrupting the proceedings beyond the day on which they were supposed to be completed,” he said.
