Former U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump walks the hallway as she attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial, in the New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, US, November 8, 2023.
Credit: Reuters Photo
New York: Her father went on the attack. Her brothers backed away. And on Wednesday, Ivanka Trump calmly sidestepped accusations that her family's business prospered thanks to a lie.
Trump, the fourth member of her family to take the witness stand in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, was questioned for five hours about her father's net worth and the loans he received because of it.
While some evidence suggested that she had dealt directly with her father's annual financial statements, which listed the value of his assets, she said that her focus had been elsewhere.
"I would assume he would have personal financial statements," she said, adding, "Those weren't things that I was privy to."
The trial stems from a lawsuit filed by the attorney general, Letitia James, that accuses former President Donald Trump and his family business of fraudulently inflating his wealth on the financial statements.
Like her father and brothers, Ivanka Trump was initially a defendant, but an appeals court dismissed the case against her. She sought to wriggle out of testifying at trial, but the court required her participation.
She was polished and soft-spoken on Wednesday, and her testimony presented a stark contrast with her father's: He spent much of his time on the stand Monday ranting and rambling about the case, which poses a major financial and reputational threat to his company. Her demeanor reflected the moderating role she has played within her fractious family, but also the fact that the stakes were higher for her father.
Her testimony marked a surprisingly low-drama conclusion to the state's dramatic case, capping a parade of witnesses -- 25 in 25 days -- who shed light on the financial statements at the heart of the trial.
Before the trial, the judge overseeing the case, Arthur F. Engoron, found that the documents were fraudulent, granting James a major victory. The trial will determine the punishment, and the attorney general is asking the judge to impose some big ones: a $250 million fine and a permanent prohibition on the Trump family doing business in New York.
No single piece of evidence directly implicated the former president as the author of any fraudulent conduct, but the drumbeat of facts tying him and his family to the inflated financial statements left the defense with a daunting task.
Ivanka Trump -- a 42-year-old mother of three who remains a subject of public fascination even after retreating from the spotlight -- was making her first appearance at a trial that threatens a business she once guided as an executive vice president. Although she had been the heir apparent, she followed her father to the White House and became embroiled in his polarizing presidency.
After her father's loss in 2020, she distanced herself from his company -- and his mounting legal problems, which now include four criminal indictments. She also hired her own lawyer, separate from the legal team representing her family in James' case, a move that rankled some in the former president's camp, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
Ivanka Trump decamped to a gated community near Miami, known as "billionaire bunker," with her children and husband, Jared Kushner, who was also a White House aide. As Kushner built a lucrative business, his wife kept a lower profile, at times diverging from her father, spurring moments of tension between them.
Her previous testimony about her father, before a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, was a major embarrassment for the former president. In the televised prime-time hearing, she acknowledged that her father had lost the election, prompting him to attack her for being "checked out" during his administration's final days.
Though their relationship was strained for a time, the two have had a rapprochement and speak regularly, according to the person who knows of the situation.
On Wednesday, she appeared not as a top executive of the Trump Organization, but as a former employee, albeit one with a highly personal connection to the case.
She played a key role in establishing some of the company's relationships with lenders -- particularly Deutsche Bank -- and answered questions about the loan terms.
The attorney general's team presented her with a 2011 email in which she told a Trump Organization colleague that the favorable terms of a deal would be possible only if backed by a guarantee about her father's net worth.
"It doesn't get better than this," Ivanka Trump said of the generous terms in 2011. "Let's discuss ASAP."
The bank's offer required the Trump Organization to maintain a minimum net worth of $3 billion, excluding any value tied to Donald Trump's brand, illustrating a central contention of the attorney general's case: that loan terms were predicated on Donald Trump's wealth, and that his annual financial statements were submitted each year to uphold those terms.
In another email exchange, the family's banker at Deutsche Bank, Rosemary Vrablic, offered the Trump Organization another set of favorable terms, prompting Ivanka Trump to thank her profusely, saying, "You are the best Rosemary!"
Yet Ivanka Trump, when asked about the annual financial statements, clammed up. At one point, she was asked about an occasion on which she was called to defend them. The meeting was with a government agency that was evaluating her company's bid to develop the Old Post Office, a federal building in Washington that became the Trump International Hotel.
"I don't recall them having discussed financial statements specifically," she says. "The whole meeting was mainly about our vision for the project."
Under gentle cross-examination from one of her father's lawyers, she addressed her role on the Washington hotel project -- "I wore a lot of different hats," she explained -- and spoke lovingly about her father's empire in brochure-like phrases: "world-class food and beverage," "super luxury hotel," "historic redevelopment."
Her father's lawyer, Jesus Suarez, also pushed her to double down on her assertion that she was not involved with the annual financial statements. She obliged.
Her brother Eric similarly disavowed knowledge of the financial statements. But while Eric Trump grew irritated under questioning, with the occasional outburst, Ivanka Trump was calm. Any resistance was delivered with a smile, including for the judge when she left the witness stand.
When she departed, the attorney general's team rested their case. Outside the courtroom, James argued that the testimony bolstered the case, "despite the fact that she was very, very nice, very friendly."
Ivanka Trump's testimony came on the heels of her father delivering a bombastic performance from the stand, where he assailed the attorney general, a Democrat, as a "political hack," and denounced the trial as "very unfair." He denied involvement in fraud but acknowledged a role in creating the financial statements.
Last week, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump testified, both saying the statements were mostly the province of accountants.
Ivanka Trump, asked about the major circumstance that separates her from her brothers -- her lack of involvement with the Trump Organization since her father took the White House -- said that she had done no work for the company since January 2017.
Her departure from the Trump Organization saved her from much legal trouble. Although James initially sued Ivanka Trump, the appeals court ruled that the accusations against her were too old to be included in the case, and noted that she had not worked for the company since her father's presidency began.
This campaign cycle, Ivanka Trump is all but invisible, having declared that she would have no role in her father's latest run for the White House. "While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena," she announced a year ago.
Although her old New York socialite circles largely shunned her after her father's presidency, she has begun to tiptoe back into the tabloids. She was seen chatting with Prince William at the wedding of Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein in Amman, and last month she attended Kim Kardashian's 43rd birthday party in Beverly Hills, California.
On Wednesday morning, when Ivanka Trump was called to the stand, Engoron teasingly nodded to her celebrity status and outsize role in the proceeding.
"Who's she?" he asked.