President Donald Trump‘s daughter and White House senior advisor, Ivanka Trump, used a quoted from Thomas Jefferson to defend her father after the Democrat-led House voted to formalize its impeachment inquiry.

She tweeted Thursday, “…surrounded by enemies and spies catching and perverting every word that falls from my lips or flows from my pen, and inventing where facts fail them.” -Thomas Jefferson’s reflections on Washington, D.C. in a letter to his daughter Martha.”

She added, “Some things never change, dad!”

The House passed an impeachment resolution 232-196 Thursday, that formalizes its rules and procedures for the inquiry. Two Democrats voted against, while a former Republican who left the party earlier this year, voted in favor. All Republicans voted against it.

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The President also took to Twitter after the resolution passed, calling it “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!”

It was Ivanka’s tweet that caused a the bigger stir on Twitter, with users firing back other Jefferson quotes in response.

Using Jefferson’s word, political analyst Susan Hennessey pointedly critiqued the nepotism involved in Ivanka becoming a senior advisor.

She tweeted, “‘The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on the ground of merit… nor can they ever see w/approbation offices, the disposal of which they entrust to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family property’—Thomas Jefferson.”

The historical circumstances of the quote from Jefferson’s 1801 letter to his daughter were slightly different than Trump’s present-day situation.

Jefferson was likely referring to the tension between him and the Federalists and its allied press, which the University of Virginia’s Miller Center described as having “reached a level of personal animosity seldom equaled in American politics” in 1800.

While the quote did center on political rivalries, the attacks on Jefferson generally focused on his lack of Christian beliefs, not an impeachment inquiry.

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Katherine Huggins

Article by Katherine Huggins