Ivanka Trump is set to appear on the witness stand today at her father’s New York $250m fraud trial. She will be the last family member and the last witness to testify before the prosecution rests its case.
Last month, Ivanka Trump asked the court to remove her from the prosecution’s witness list, though she ultimately rescinded the appeal. Ivanka Trump tried to argue that appearing in court would cause her “undue hardship” if she was to testify during the school week. The attorney general’s office had wanted Trump’s eldest daughter to testify in court before the former president himself took the stand, but ultimately rescheduled her appearance because of her appeal.
Once listed as a co-defendant on the case, along with her father and two adult brothers, an appeals court tossed out the claims against Ivanka Trump last summer, saying that her involvement with the Trump Organization had passed the statute of limitations.
Before the trial started, Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump guilty of inflating the value of his assets on state financial statements that were used to broker deals and obtain loans. Though Trump’s team is appealing the decision, he stands to lose his state business licenses if the appellate court sides with Engoron. The actual trial is over the fine Trump will have to pay. Prosecutors are asking for at least $250m.
Ivanka Trump had served as a top executive at the Trump Organization, alongside brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, until 2017, when she stepped down to assist her father at the White House. Like her siblings, she helped her father broker deals with lenders to develop properties for the company.
Brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump testified last week, distancing themselves from the financial statements at the center of the case despite multiple documents showing they affirmed the statements’ financial representations and were, at times, consulted for the statements.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s testimony from Monday is unlikely to sway Engoron. Trump took a defensive stance against the court as a whole, calling the case a “witch-hunt” in his testimony. Trump argued the case is moot because of a “worthless” clause – disclosures on the loan agreements made with banks saying that the company did not certify the valuations of their assets.
Engoron told Trump on Monday that he had already struck down the worthless clause argument in his September pretrial ruling. “If you want to read about the [worthless] clause, read my opinion,” he told Trump, who was growing angry on the stand.
It is unclear what stance Ivanka Trump will take on the stand. She has surprised in testimony before when in 2022 she told investigators looking into the January 6 Capitol insurrection that she did not believe the election was stolen, contrary to her father’s furious insistence. Trump’s eldest daughter said she believed former attorney general William Barr, who maintained that Trump had lost the election.
“I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying,” Ivanka Trump told congressional investigators at the time.
after newsletter promotion
But of course, it will be easy for Ivanka Trump to keep a blase stance on the stand, like her brothers, to protect her father. Trump has already railed against the judge on social media for making his children take the stand.
“Leave my children alone, Engoron. You are a disgrace to the legal profession,” he wrote on 1 November.
After the attorney general rests its case, Trump’s team will go through its own list of witnesses, which they say could take until 15 December. The trial is scheduled to end by 22 December.