Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee want to interview White House advisor Ivanka Trump as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference, according to Buzzfeed.
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee want to interview White House advisor Ivanka Trump as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference, according to a Buzzfeed article published Tuesday. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he wanted to question the president’s eldest daughter over “two separate national security questions,” Buzzfeed said.
An unnamed source familiar with the matter told Buzzfeed that Senate Democrats had wanted to interview Trump “for a while.” The source added that Trump is not a central figure in the investigation, and so the committee has prioritized other interviews.
A representative for Ivanka Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wyden’s chief of staff and communications director were not immediately available to comment. The heightened interest follows reports that Trump attempted to connect one of her father’s associates to a Russian weightlifter in 2015 who touted an unsubstantiated and unclear connection to Russian President Vladmir Putin. That weightlifter, Dmitry Klokov, reportedly offered to set up a meeting between President Donald Trump and Putin to help facilitate the construction of the 100-story Trump World Tower Moscow, whose construction was later abandoned. Klokov told CNBC on June 6 that he had never met Ivanka Trump, and denied offering to set up the meeting. Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyer, told CNBC that Trump did not know Klokov, but did receive an “unsolicited email from his wife,” which she passed on to Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and fixer who is currently under federal investigation in New York City. The other matter Wyden said he wanted to question Trump about was the Chinese government’s May decision to award her company a number of trademarks in the country. The timing of the decision raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, coming at the same time that Trump’s father announced a plan to resuscitate Chinese telecom giant ZTE. Abigail Klem, the president of the Ivanka Trump brand, said in a statement that the trademarks were filed in the “normal course of business.”
It does not appear that Trump will have an interview scheduled soon. The unnamed source told Buzzfeed that Republicans on the committee “aren’t wild about” the idea. Caitlin Carroll, communications director for Richard Burr, R-N. C., the chairman of the committee, declined to comment.
