Ivanka Trump is testifying in the ongoing civil fraud trial of her father and his business in New York on Wednesday, the fourth and final member of the Trump family to take the stand.
Former President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter is not a defendant in the case, but evidence presented in court Wednesday indicated she personally sent a document that was rife with fraud to a bank executive. Ivanka Trump submitted the document, a snapshot of her father’s wealth in 2011, to the bank while negotiating a loan.
Ivanka Trump is appearing two days after her father testified for four tense hours, repeatedly lashing out at the judge overseeing the case and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Donald Trump and two of his sons are accused of a decade of fraud tied to false inflation of his net worth and the value of Trump Organization properties. Ivanka Trump was an executive at the Trump Organization until 2017, when she left to join her father in the White House. She was originally a defendant in the lawsuit, but a New York appellate court dismissed claims against her in June, ruling that they were barred by the state’s statute of limitations.
Ivanka Trump’s testimony
Yuki Iwamura / AP
Louis Solomon, a lawyer from the attorney general’s office, opened the testimony by asking Ivanka Trump about her work history and involvement in a variety of business deals for the Trump Organization.
Solomon soon turned to a statement of financial condition from 2011 that described her father’s assets. Ivanka Trump enclosed the document in a letter to Deutsche Bank’s then-CEO while negotiating a loan guaranteed by her father. The judge has already found that the statement portrayed Trump’s wealth as $3 billion higher than it actually was.
One month later, the bank offered a deal with significantly better loan rates than it had previously offered.
“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka Trump wrote, forwarding the offer to other Trump Organization executives.
Earlier in the trial, a former Deutsche Bank executive who analyzed risk for loans to high-net-worth individuals testified that the bank relied on, at least in part, the statement of financial condition that year.
“I assumed that the representations of the value of the assets and liabilities were broadly accurate,” said Nicholas Haigh, the executive.
Ivanka Trump said she didn’t recall sending the email, or the letter to the bank CEO. The deal involved a loan for the Trump National Doral golf course in Florida, which Ivanka Trump acknowledged as one of her two biggest projects while working for her father’s company.
Still, she maintained more than a dozen times in her early testimony that she had forgotten many of the details from her negotiations related to loans that buttressed her father’s effort to buy the course. Her recollection of many interactions and meetings, she said, extended only to what she had been shown by James’ office during an August 2022 deposition.
Asked about discussions with her father related to the deal, she said she remembered them only because of the deposition.
“I recall you showed me, I think, a letter from my father,” Ivanka Trump said.
And asked about negotiations related to key loan terms, her memory faltered.
“I think it would be hard for me to answer that question sitting here today, all of these years removed,” Ivanka Trump said.
One of those instances involved an unsuccessful effort in February 2016, while Donald Trump was vying for the Republican presidential nomination, to increase a credit line she previously negotiated for her father. The bank declined, citing his candidacy.
“At the end, it came down to a global corporate decision to maintain neutrality to any political situation and not lend money to a highly politically exposed person,” a bank executive wrote in an email to Ivanka Trump.
That and other exhibits presented Wednesday were challenged by lawyers for the defendants, who argued it was unclear why Ivanka Trump was on the stand discussing the loan, since she is not also a defendant.
Solomon, the lawyer for James’ office, said the state had already shown she was crucial to a banking relationship at the center of the state’s case against her family.
“She’s negotiating the deal from top to bottom,” Solomon said.
Asked if her father discussed his financial statements during a meeting with government officials before the Trumps took over the Old Post Office property in Washington, D.C., Ivanka said she could not remember. She then described several other details about the meeting, and what she said Donald Trump spoke about.
The response raised Solomon’s ire, and he asked the judge to strike most of what she said.
“She just spent three minutes describing the Plaza Hotel — how it’s similar to this, how her father spoke about this, how he spoke about that — but she doesn’t have recollection of the answers to my questions,” Solomon said.
The Trump fraud case
Her two older brothers, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, both sought to blame accountants working for the Trump Organization for inaccuracies in the statements of financial condition, which were central to the alleged scheme to overstate their father’s wealth by billions in order to receive favorable rates on loans and insurance.
Trump himself gave different reasons for the inaccuracies while on the stand on Monday. He argued a disclaimer on the statements absolved himself and the company of responsibility for its accuracy. Trump claimed the statements actually under-valued his properties, an assertion that runs counter to a pretrial ruling by the judge, who said the statements over-valued Trump’s assets and found the defendants liable for fraud.
James’ office says the Trumps profited by at least $250 million through the fraud, and are asking the judge to award the state an equivalent amount. The judge will also rule on other allegations related to falsification of business records, conspiracy and insurance fraud. The defendants have denied all wrongdoing.
The state is expected to rest its case after Ivanka Trump concludes her testimony on Thursday.
Lawyers for the Trumps will begin calling their own witnesses on Nov. 13. They expect to conclude their case by Dec. 15, they said in court on Monday.
Katrina Kaufman contributed reporting.