Nov. 8 (UPI) — Ivanka Trump testified Wednesday that she was not involved in fraudulent Trump Organization financial statements, but was paid a profit from the 2022 sale of the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C.
Asked about a financial statement that has been deemed fraudulent by Judge Arthur Engoron, she said she was not involved and doesn’t know what valuations it contained.
But under questioning by the New York attorney general’s office lawyer Louis Solomon, Ivanka Trump admitted she was paid a profit from the Trump Organization 2022 sale of the Old Post Office Building in Washington.
From the witness stand Ivanka Trump repeatedly replied “I don’t recall” when asked about documents as well as letters and emails she wrote presented to her by the attorney general’s lawyer questioning her.
As Solomon continued his questioning about business transactions more than a decade old, Trump attorney Chris Kise objected to her testifying after being “dragged” into court.
Solomon replied she was being questioned about Trump Organization deals she had negotiated “from top to bottom.”
Ivanka Trump told Solomon she had given him the same answers to these questions a year and a half ago.
As Ivanka Trump’s testimony began Wednesday in the New York civil business fraud trial against her father, brothers and the Trump Organization she said she had not worked for the business since 2017.
She was dropped as a defendant in the case when an appeals court ruled her work at the Trump Organization happened too long ago.
But New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters Wednesday morning that Ivanka is “inextricably tied to the Trump Organization.”
She’s the last Trump to testify in the penalty phase of the $250 million civil fraud trial against her father Donald Trump after he was found liable for inflating the value of his real estate properties in New York.
A September ruling found the Trump Organization consistently lied about the value of its holdings, which defrauded banks and insurers throughout the state for years.
Ivanka Trump once served as the executive vice president of the Trump Organization before she became a senior White House adviser after Trump won the 2016 election, forcing her to step away from her role in the family business.
She testified about setting up some Trump Organization financial institution relationships, including some of the loans personally guaranteed by former president and defendant Donald Trump.
Since her father left office in 2021, she has neither sought public office nor taken part in his 2024 campaign.
Previously, she sat for a deposition in August 2022 when she denied any involvement in the family’s bookkeeping and said she wasn’t privy to financial documents that fraudulently reported the company’s value.
“I have my own. I’ve never prepared one. I don’t know. I never made one. I’m not an accountant,” Ivanka Trump said at the time.
James, who brought the multimillion-dollar civil case against Trump, initially named Ivanka Trump as a co-defendant, claiming she was involved in leveraging her father’s financial statements, but an appeals court dismissed her from the case in June, citing the statute of limitations.
Ivanka Trump filed an appeal to avoid her upcoming testimony, claiming she lacked any pertinent information regarding the alleged misconduct, but in court documents, James asserted that Ivanka Trump “indisputably has personal knowledge of facts relevant to the claims.”
In his ruling nearly two weeks ago, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Ivanka Trump to testify, saying the state presented sufficient evidence to prove that she has business interests in New York and should testify.
An appeals court also rejected Ivanka Trump’s request for an emergency stay, which argued that her testimony “in the middle of a school week” would be overly burdensome to the mother of three.
Ivanka Trump faced direct questions under oath about what she did or didn’t know about the extensive paper trail of fraud inside the Trump Organization.
Her name has come up several times in connection with the trial, with James alleging she played a pivotal role as an intermediary between Deutsche Bank and the Trump organization in securing loans that were contingent on her father’s bogus financial statements.
The valuation of her own New York apartment has come into question as part of the case after it was priced at two and a half times the rate she paid for the property, court papers say.
Three New York business entities linked to Ivanka Trump were sent subpoenas after evidence emerged that the Trump Organization was covering all of her expenses, including household staffing, credit cards, taxes and New York housing — highlighting the depth of her ongoing involvement with the family business.
“Ms. Trump, even after her formal resignation, has remained intertwined with the Trump Organization and we believe that she is still amenable to service through that enterprise,” Assistant Attorney General Sherief Gaber wrote in a Sept. 26 email.
Meanwhile, Trump’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., testified in the trial last week as the defense sought to shirk responsibility onto accountants who were involved in preparing financial statements for the Trump Organization.
Trump Jr. testified he approved his father’s financial statements but emphasized that other executives in the company were responsible for keeping track of the books.
Eric Trump testified he had no knowledge of his father’s financial statements, and before explaining his role.
“I understood we had financials as a company. I was not personally aware of the statement of financial condition,” Eric Trump said. “I did not work on the statement of financial condition. I’ve been very clear about that.”
Testifying in his own defense on Monday, former President Trump became combative with the judge on the stand, while asserting that he was aware his properties could have been overvalued, but argued that it was a result of the high worth associated with his brand name.
All the testimony is being used to determine the amount of damages the former president will pay after Engoron issued a summary ruling on Sept. 26 that found Trump inflated the value of his New York real estate, including his hotels and golf clubs.
Previously, James said her office was using the civil trial to pinpoint the individuals inside the Trump Organization most responsible for cooking the books and was seeking at least $250 million for fraud that she asserts inflated Donald Trump’s wealth by $2.2 billion.
Trump continues to deny he did anything wrong, while claiming the civil trial was an attempt to interfere with his 2024 campaign.
