When Ivanka Trump arrived at the New York Supreme Court Wednesday to testify in her father’s civil fraud trial, she didn’t receive the cheers and adulation she once counted on when she stepped out in public in her hometown.
“Crime family, crime family!” a gaggle of protesters shouted as former President Donald Trump’s daughter exited a black SUV and made her way toward the courtroom. Trying to look unbothered by the chants but still grim-faced, Ivanka Trump had come to court to face questioning from the New York Attorney General’s office on alleged widespread fraud in her family’s Trump Organization.
People yell “fraud family!” at Ivanka Trump as she enters the courthouse. pic.twitter.com/GL2kAQJMkJ
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) November 8, 2023
Once upon a time, Ivanka Trump was viewed by some as a New York City high-society princess, valued as the polished, elegant antidote to her father’s brash, crass persona. She and her husband Jared Kushner, a prince of high-society, were regular fixtures at the annual Met Gala, or she was often photographed at events around town, attending swanky soirees or promoting the latest Trump Organization real estate development project.
But New York’s perceptions of Ivanka Trump markedly changed after she and her husband joined Trump’s White House as senior advisers after he won the 2016 election, Vanity Fair, W and other outlets have reported. The couple were essentially black-balled from liberal Manhattan circles as they continued to publicly stand by her father, even as he enacted controversial policies as president and stoked false claims of voter fraud in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
When Donald Trump had no choice but to leave the White House in 2021, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and their three children decamped to Miami, knowing they wouldn’t be welcome with open arms in New York, according to reports. While they settled not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private resort in Palm Beach. Ivanka Trump has tried to publicly distance herself from her father and his 2024 presidential campaign.
However, her critics would say that her complicity in her father’s various alleged misdeeds has made that difficult. That includes the allegations of fraud in the Trump Organization, as outlined by the $250 million civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The attorney general alleges that the former president and other executives at the Trump organization inflated the former mogul’s net worth, as well as the value of his properties, to obtain favorable loans from banks. Unlike her father and brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric, Ivanka Trump is not a defendant in the case. But, like them, she has been called to testify.
Outside the courtroom Wednesday, James insisted that Ivanka Trump still was “inextricably tied” to the case because she was a longtime executive vice president with the Trump Organization. In this position, Ivanka helped secure favorable loans that were “based on fraudulent statements” of the company’s finances, James said.
“She will attempt today to distance herself from the company, but unfortunately, the facts will reveal that in fact she was very much involved,” James said.
For her appearance in court, Ivanka Trump was her usual polished, elegant self, with the Daily Mail saying that she left her Park Avenue apartment and arrived at court, wearing a blue Carolina Herrera coat and Jimmy Choo heels and clutching a Chanel bag. On the stand, the New York Times reported that her “testimony has been calm and controlled.”
But reporters for the Times and other courtroom observers noted the many times that Ivanka Trump seemed to avoid saying anything too damaging about her father or his company by replying, “I don’t recall” or some variation thereof.
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said, “The import of her testimony isn’t so much what she remembers — spoiler alert, like her brothers, it’s not a whole lot.” Rubin also said that the documents Ivanka Trump was shown in court “don’t necessarily refresh her memory about her involvement.” Still, Rubin argued that the documents presented in court were “devastating” for the Trump Organization and for the Attorney General’s case against them.
One of the documents has to do with an email exchange between a lawyer at the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump over her father’s effort to get a loan from Deutsche Bank in 2011 under favorable terms, so that he could fund his Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Florida, the New York Times reported.
In order to secure the loan, Deutsche Bank required Trump to maintain a minimum net worth of $3 billion, but the Trump Organization attorney said that would be a problem. Ivanka Trump responded by saying it was known from the outset that the only way to get a “great rate” on a loan is to guarantee the deal in this way, the New York Times reported. Other emails show that Ivanka Trump proposed lowering the required net worth even further, CNN added.
“Again, this underscores James’s claim,” the Times reported. “That the statements of financial condition, and Donald Trump’s overall net worth, allowed the Trump Organization to get such great terms from banks.”
It’s not clear if Ivanka Trump will need to return to court Thursday for another day of testifying. She was still on the stand as of 3 p.m. EST. Last week, she went to court in an unsuccessful bid to avoid testifying. She argued that she should be spared giving midweek testimony because she is a busy mother of school-aged children in Florida.
An appeals court curtly denied Ivanka Trump’s request to delay her testimony, and her critics mocked her online for her “school week” argument, saying it showed that she thought she was above the law or that she was “privileged” and out of touch with the daily challenges of regular people.
Ahead of Ivanka Trump’s court appearance Wednesday, Trump praised his “wonderful, beautiful daughter” and blasted the court’s decision to make her testify on his Truth Social platform, the Daily Mail said. He also hurled insults at “Letitia Peekaboo James,” “the Corrupt and Racist New York State Attorney General,” and the “Trump Hating, out of control Clubhouse appointed Judge, Arthur Engoron.”
