Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a former White House senior aide, is expected to voluntarily appear before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as early as Thursday, ABC News reported Monday.
Kushner, who lives with his family in Florida, will be interviewed remotely about the events surrounding last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, sources told ABC.
Kushner was returning to Washington from Saudi Arabia when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, and he didn’t return to the White House after he landed.
He avoided Trump after the insurrection because he feared they would “get in a fight,” he told a Republican lawmaker, ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl reported in his book “Betrayal.” He apparently didn’t explain why.
But Kushner also reportedly expended no energy trying to end the insurrection. He rebuffed a desperate plea from the chief of staff of then-Vice President Mike Pence to intercede with Trump on his “dangerous” push to overturn the presidential election, Karl reported in his book.
“Please, Jared, can you talk to your father-in-law?” Pence aide Marc Short begged ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to Karl’s reporting. “This is getting dangerous. Somebody’s got to tell him that Mike Pence can’t single-handedly overturn the election.”
Kushner told Short he had neither the time nor the interest because he was working on “Middle East peace,” Karl recounted. He made no statement about the insurrection during or after the violence.
Kushner and other Trump aides who “knew better ... simply took a step back and did nothing,” Karl said.
Despite his apparent lack of effort to to prevent or end the violence, Kushner could nevertheless have valuable information for the committee about the events leading up to the attack, which was an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden.
Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, was at the White House that day and appealed to her father to call off the rioters, according to reports. The House committee is negotiating with the former first daughter to convince her to cooperate with the investigation.
