The Trump Family Behaves Exactly How You’d Expect in Documentary Subpoenaed by Jan. 6 Committee

If you’ve been keeping up with the January 6 committee’s public hearings, you likely know that they haven’t been going great for Donald Trump. Last week, for instance, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that, among other things, the ex-president knew his supporters were armed before they marched to the Capitol and didn’t care, physically assaulted a Secret Service agent when he was told he couldn’t go with them, and suggested that Mike Pence deserved the chants calling for him to be hanged. The same day Hutchinson appeared before the panel, committee vice chair Liz Cheney also suggested, without referencing names, that she had evidence that members of Team Trump have been engaging in witness tampering on the 45th president’s behalf, and in addition to that, we’ve heard from scores of MAGA insiders who’ve testified that Trump knew he lost and went through with his scheme to overturn the election anyway.

Obviously, that all looks and sounds extremely bad for the former guy, and yet, somehow, the committee isn’t even finished. Committee member Adam Schiff has said the next hearing will focus on efforts to lure Trump’s violent followers to Washington. And at some point, we could hear from documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who began shooting extensive interviews with the Trump family back in September 2020. (The footage was subpoenaed by the committee and turned over last month; Holder testified behind closed doors on June 23.)

What kind of morsels can we expect? Thus far, Holder’s work has reportedly shown that, despite telling the panel she believed Attorney General Bill Barr when he said there was no evidence the election had been stolen, Ivanka Trump was insisting as late as mid-December 2020 that her father “has to take on this fight” because people were supposedly questioning “the sanctity of our elections.” Elsewhere, in a recent interview with The Independent, Holder said that the Trumps, and especially Eric Trump, were unconcerned about the idea that the violent rhetoric and lies the 45th president fed his supporters would lead them to violence. “When I asked Eric about the potential danger of sort of rhetoric and the sort of the belligerence, he felt that it was…fair game in that it…was sort of the equivalent on the other side of the political discourse, or he felt that it was the right thing to do…because the election was stolen,” Holder said.

And now, thanks to a two-minute trailer for the docuseries obtained by Politico, we also know that the footage will provide an up-close look at the Trumps in the exact manner we’ve come to expect: Vapid, unhinged, and in potentially compromising positions that will come back to haunt them.

Per Politico:

Clips of interviews with Eric and Ivanka have been described in the press and outtakes from Holder’s interviews with Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence have become public. But the trailer provides the first glimpse of the breadth of Holder’s access to the Trump family. Ivanka frets about a line on her dress, and jokes about covering it with a pet roaming about. “Can I borrow your dog?” she asks her makeup artist. [Jared] Kushner nervously repositions his tie and asks “Is that okay?” Don Jr., seen at a rally, screams, “We will make liberals cry again!” Eric is caught on a phone call, mysteriously saying, “For the sake of this country, we’re going to get these guys.”

It all builds to January 6, when the Vivaldi suddenly stops and a wide shot of Trump at the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington appears. “Let’s all walk down Pennsylvania Avenue,” he tells the crowd. Then Holder’s cameraperson joined the crowd as it marched on the Capitol. “We’ve got to get the roaches out, all of them,” a protester yells straight to camera as he appears to motion toward Congress. Next up is a montage of scenes from the front lines as the rioters breach the Capitol and police in riot gear are attacked.

As we learned last month, the Trumps have Jared Kushner to thank for whatever the world is about to find out from the footage. According to The New York Times, Holder got in with the family via the then first son-in-law.