Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump and a senior advisor to the president, said that she agreed with her father that the impeachment inquiry against him is about “overturning the results of the 2016 election.”
“Basically since the election, this has been the experience that our administration and our family has been having,” Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press in an interview in Morocco, where she’s promoting an American program to help empower women in other countries.
“Rather than wait, under a year, until the people can decide for themselves based on his record and based on his accomplishments, this new effort has commenced.”
President Trump has noted that impeachment efforts began against him almost as soon as he took office, highlighting a Washington Post article from the day he was inaugurated detailing the push.
Ivanka Trump said that her father released a transcript of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry, adding, “everything is in the transcript.”
The inquiry was triggered by a complaint filed by a person who remains anonymous, though an alleged name has been reported in several media outlets.
Asked about the whistleblower, Trump told the Associated Press the person’s identity is “not particularly relevant,” noting the complaint was full of secondhand information and details from media reports.
“The whistleblower shouldn’t be a substantive part of the conversation,” she said, adding that the person “did not have firsthand information.”
“To me, it’s not particularly relevant aside from what the motivation behind all of this was,” she added of the identity.
President Trump has repeatedly railed against the whistleblower, calling for the person’s identity to be revealed. Democrats initially said they wanted the whistleblower to testify in a closed-door hearing but reversed themselves after it was revealed that at least one staff member of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) met with the person before the complaint was filed.
Schiff said he regretted telling the public in mid-September: “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.”
Open hearings in the inquiry are slated to start on Nov. 13 after weeks of hearings behind closed doors.
“Those open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves, to make their own determinations about the credibility of the witnesses, but also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct,” Schiff told reporters this week.
Ambassador William Taylor, a diplomat to Ukraine, and George Kent, deputy assistant secretary for European affairs, will testify on Nov. 13 and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will testify on Nov. 15, Schiff said.
