White House Waives Executive Privilege For Jared Kushner And Ivanka Trump Ahead Of January 6 Committee Appearances

Topline

The White House will not assert executive privilege over the testimony of former President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner before the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, clearing the way for Kushner to testify remotely Thursday and undermining a legal argument others have used to avoid complying with the committee’s requests.

Key Facts

The White House decided to deny executive privilege for Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, in order to enable a full accounting of the events of January 6, 2021, and because executive privilege “should not be used to shield from Congress or the public information about an attack on the Constitution itself,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said Tuesday.

Neither Kushner nor Trump had publicly indicated that they planned to refuse to testify or to invoke executive privilege, though this doctrine has been invoked by several other former Trump Administration officials called before the committee.

Bedingfield declined to comment on whether this decision had previously been communicated to Kushner’s legal team.

Though Kushner was not at the White House on the day of the riot, the committee has said it believes Trump may have been present in the Oval Office during a critical phone call between her father and then Vice President Mike Pence regarding efforts to enlist Pence in a plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The committee requested Ivanka Trump appear to be interviewed, and a spokesperson told CBS February 23 that she was negotiating to appear voluntarily.

Representatives for Kushner and the Trumps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tangent

The doctrine of executive privilege allows the president and some other members of the executive branch to hold back information in defense of the public interest. Although former presidents can successfully claim executive privilege in some circumstances, attempts to use former President Trump’s executive privilege to withhold testimony and documents from the January 6 committee have been mostly unsuccessful.

Key Background

Monday, the committee recommended criminal contempt charges for former Trump Administration communications staffer Daniel Scavino Jr. and trade adviser Peter Navarro after both attempted to use claims of executive privilege to justify refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas. President Joe Biden had previously denied Navarro’s claim of executive privilege. In January, former President Trump also attempted to use executive privilege to persuade the Supreme Court to block the release of hundreds of pages of call logs, emails, handwritten notes and other Trump Administration documents to the committee. Former President Trump’s argument was rejected by all members of the Supreme Court except for Justice Clarence Thomas, who became embroiled in controversy last week after it was reported that his wife, Ginni Thomas, had urged former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to help overturn the 2020 election.

Surprising Fact

Kushner is a Nobel nominee. In 2021, he was nominated alongside his deputy Avi Berkowitz for a Nobel Peace Prize for work on a diplomatic accord between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. The prize was ultimately awarded to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, for their work defending freedom of speech in the Philippines and Russia, respectively. The Nobel Prize nominating process is not extremely exclusive—nominations can be submitted by previous Nobel Peace Prize recipients, members of cabinets and national assemblies, university professors and associate professors of history, law, philosophy, religion, social sciences and theology, as well as members of certain other internationally prominent organizations. Kushner and Berkowitz were nominated by Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz.

Further Reading

“Jan. 6 Committee Recommends Criminal Contempt Charges For Two Ex-Trump Officials” (Forbes)