Ivanka Trump testifies at her father’s civil fraud trial
Donald Trump’s daughter has told a New York court she doesn’t recall specifics about her involvement in securing loans at the centre of the civil case against the former president and his business empire.
Ivanka Trump said in sworn testimony Wednesday that she had a foggy recollection of her role in negotiating hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at the center of the New York fraud case against her father and his business empire.
Former President Donald Trump’s daughter, who worked closely with her father at the Trump Organization and while he was in the White House, became the fourth Trump family member to testify in the civil trial in Manhattan, following her father and her siblings Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
She was originally among those sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, but was dismissed from the case earlier this year after an appeals court ruled the state’s legal claims against her were too old.
Ivanka Trump served as executive vice president at the Trump Organization until 2017 before becoming a presidential adviser in his administration. She has more recently distanced herself from her father’s political and business interests and, unlike her brothers, retained separate counsel to represent her in the case.
On Wednesday, she was questioned about her work at the Trump business, where she played a key role in helping her father redevelop and secure financing for several Trump Organization properties, including the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami and the former Trump International Hotel in the former Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C.
She and her husband, Jared Kushner, were the ones who also connected Donald Trump to Deutsche Bank’s private-wealth-management unit from which Trump borrowed more than $300 million.
A lawyer for the state attorney general’s office showed her emails she wrote to Trump senior executives in 2011 praising Deutsche Bank’s proposed low-interest loan terms that included covenants requiring her father to maintain a minimum net worth of $3 billion and unencumbered liquidity of $50 million.
The email chain also showed her brushing back concerns raised by the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer about whether the net-worth requirement would be a problem.
Ivanka Trump said she didn’t recall the correspondence. Lou Solomon, the state lawyer examining Ivanka Trump, asked her if she thought it was a good deal.
“We ended up doing the deal with Deutsche Bank,” Ivanka Trump said. “I thought generally the deal terms with Deutsche Bank were positive, and we proceeded forward.” She said she wasn’t involved in the creation of statements about her father’s financial condition and couldn’t say what those documents did and didn’t take into account.
James’s office alleges Donald Trump and others engaged in a decadelong scheme to artificially inflate the value of assets for favorable loan terms and other benefits. The state is seeking $250 million in penalties as well as restrictions that could prevent Trump from doing business in New York. The former president has accused James of targeting him for political reasons and said banks profited from the transactions.
Ivanka Trump’s subdued and brief answers to questions stood in sharp contrast to her father’s fiery and sprawling testimony Monday during which he railed against the case against him and the judge presiding over the trial.
Her testimony is expected to continue Wednesday afternoon.
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