The ex-first daughter’s self-contradictory comments originate from previously unseen footage recorded by Alex Holder, a filmmaker who had extensive access to Trump’s inner circle and — for a documentary series covering the last stretches of the Trump administration — recorded interviews with Ivanka, former Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, Trump himself, and his two adult sons.
According to the Times, Holder gained access to Trump and his closest allies when Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer and then-White House envoy to the Middle East, introduced him to Kushner. The filmmaker and his crew, who began filming in September 2020, sat down with Ivanka Trump on December 10, 2020, nine days after Barr announced that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. “It affected my perspective,” Ivanka said of Barr’s announcement in taped testimony aired by the select committee.
Despite telling the select committee that she “respected” Barr and had long since “accepted” his no-evidence-of election-fraud declaration — which multiple news reports of her and Kushner’s efforts to distance themselves from the conspiracies orbiting the Trump White House in the final throes of her father's tenure seemed to corroborate — Ivanka declared a different view to the documentarian.
“I think that, as the president has said, every single vote needs to be counted and needs to be heard, and he campaigned for the voiceless. And I think a lot of Americans feel very, very disenfranchised right now, and really, question the sanctity of our elections, and that’s not right, it’s not acceptable. And he has to take on this fight. Look, you fight for what you love the most and he loves this country and he loves this country’s people, and he wants to make sure that their voice is, is heard and not muted,” Ivanka said to Holder on film, the Times reported.
She added that her father “will continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted and that’s what he should do.”
The footage is part of a trove that Holder, whom the bipartisan House panel subpoenaed Tuesday, turned over to the select committee. Holder, who filmed several hours of interviews and is expected to testify at an upcoming hearing, said in a statement that he was “fully cooperating” with the select committee.
Representatives for Ivanka Trump ignored multiple journalists’ requests for comment.
