1 of 1 Ivanka Trump on November 8, 2023 Photo: Andrew Kelly/Portal Ivanka Trump on November 8, 2023 Photo: Andrew Kelly/Portal
Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter, said this Wednesday (8) that she does not remember details of real estate deals in which she served as an executive in her father’s company. Ivanka has testified in the civil fraud trial in New York that threatens the US company’s former president.
The big question in the trial is whether the values of the companies’ assets on their balance sheets were overstated.
Trump’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump testified last week and said they had no influence on how the amounts were calculated. Ivanka has also tried to distance herself from these operations.
Trump, however, acknowledged that some of the company’s valuations for golf courses, office towers and other assets were inaccurate.
The lawsuit, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, accuses Trump and his family businesses of manipulating real estate values to deceive creditors and insurers and embellish Trump’s reputation as a successful businessman.
Unlike her brothers and father, Ivanka Trump is not a defendant in the case.
Former US President Donald Trump gives a statement in a New York court
As a senior executive at the Trump Organization between 2011 and 2017, Ivanka said she focused on redeveloping the Doral golf course in Florida and the Old Post Office property in Washington.
At trial, she was presented with an email from 2011 in which she acknowledged that Deutsche Bank’s requirement that her father have a net worth of at least $3 billion was a problem.
“We wanted to get a great price and the only way to get resources/time and capital where we want them is to close the deal,” she wrote to a lawyer for the Trump Organization.
The two sides ultimately agreed to set the net worth requirement at $2.5 billion, although his father claimed he had a net worth of $4.3 billion that year.
On the stand, she said she was in favor of the settlement but couldn’t remember the exact terms. “I had the impression that the terms of the contract with Deutsche Bank were overall positive for Doral,” she said.
She also saw a 2011 email from the federal government expressing concern about irregularities in Trump’s financial reports when the company proposed redeveloping the Old Post Office, a federal property.
She again said she couldn’t remember details. “There were a lot of emails, a lot of conversations,” she said.
Trump, who is leading his rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite numerous legal problems, has denied any wrongdoing and accused James and Judge Arthur Engoron of political bias and “election interference.” He repeated those claims on social media Tuesday night, saying it was “sad!” that Ivanka was forced to testify.