‘I Don’t Recall’: A Poised Ivanka Trump Doesn’t Give an Inch as She Testifies at Her Father’s Fraud Trial

Ivanka Trump tried, and failed, to avoid testifying in her father’s fraud trial. But when she took the stand on Wednesday, the eldest daughter of President Trump defended her family’s real estate empire against Attorney General Letitia James’ attempt to take it. “I am not involved with his personal SFCs,” Ms. Trump, composed and prepared, said in her soft spoken voice, referring to the Trump Organization’s Statements of Financial Condition. “I did not know about his personal statements per se.”The SFC’s are the pulsating heart of Ms. James’ case against Mr. Trump.Ms. James alleges that Mr. Trump and his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, along with other Trump Organization executives, committed a decades-long fraud scheme by inflating the value of Trump real estate holdings by as much as $3.6 billion in the SFCs. Ivanka Trump exits the courtroom for a lunch break during the civil fraud trial of her father. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.The allegedly inflated SFCs helped the Trumps secure loans and insurance at lower rates and premiums. These financial hijinks saved the Trump Organization money, but cost their banks and insurers at least $168 million in lost revenue, an expert witness for Ms. James testified earlier in the trial. Ms. James’ lawsuit originally named Ms. Trump as a defendant, but a state appeals court ruled the allegations were too old to apply to her due to statutes of limitation and dismissed Ms. Trumo as a defendant in June. Nevertheless, the attorney general still sought Ms. Trump’s testimony as a witness. Ms. Trump’s attorneys tried to protect her from having to testify, but a higher court rejected her appeal.“The people call Ivanka Trump,” said a state lawyer, Louis Solomon, prosecuting on behalf of Ms. James, on Wednesday morning.“Who is she?” joked the judge presiding over the case, a New York State Supreme Court justice, Arthur F. Engoron, in his usual morning attempt to lighten the courtroom mood. Ivanka Trump leaves New York State Supreme Court after testifying at her father’s civil fraud trial. Spencer Platt/Getty Images.Ms. Trump was the final family member to be questioned by the prosecution, following her father’s anger-tinged testimony on Monday, and her two brothers’ appearances last week. Unlike the Trump men Ms. Trump didn’t pose for photographers inside the courtroom. Wearing a dark blue suit, the statuesque former model and mother of three walked straight to the witness stand and sat down. There were no sudden outbursts, no filibustering and none of the irritated speechifying that distinguished her father’s testimony. Ms. Trump made no offhand comments, like her older brother Donald Jr. did when he flirtatiously told a court sketcher, “you made me look like a superhero.”And no drama erupted like contretemps over Judge Engoron’s “biased” law clerk that had overshadowed Eric’s questioning on Friday. Ms. Trump remained poised. She politely but definitively deflected the prosecutor’s questions with “I don’t recall” or some variation at least 50 times — a reprise of her Congressional testimony about her father’s conduct on and leading up to Jan. 6th. There she said “I don’t recall,” “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know” at least 300 times. Ms. Trump is the second of three children from Mr. Trump’s first marriage to Ivana, who died last year after a fall in her Manhattan townhouse. Along with her brothers Donald Jr. and Eric, Ms. Trump has long been part of her father’s inner-circle of advisors. She was executive vice president at the Trump Organization, in addition to having her own fashion line, before becoming an unpaid senior adviser in her father’s White House. And, like her father, she retreated to Florida after his 2020 election loss. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, also a real estate scion, are now building a $32 million home on Miami’s Indian Creek Island.While she worked as a Trump Organization executive before 2017, Ms. Trump helped secure a loan and a lease for a new hotel in Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office Building, financing for the Doral golf resort near Miami and financing for a hotel and condo skyscraper in Chicago, according to court filings. In order to obtain those enormous loans, the Trump organization relied on the inflated SFCs, Ms. James alleges.One of the most challenging moments for Ms.Trump related to the Doral golf-course deal, which was financed with a loan from Deutsche Bank. Ms. Trump testified that her husband, Mr. Kushner, introduced her to Deutsche Bank’s Rosemary Vrablic, the managing director and senior private banker of its U.S. Private Wealth Management business. Ms. Vrablic managed more than $5 billion in assets at the peak of her power. To secure the $125 million loan for the purchase of the Doral golf-course, Ms. Vrablic required that Donald J. Trump personally guarantee the loan, which he did. An email presented as evidence showed Ms. Trump offered to send Ms. Vrablic allegedly fraudulent SFCs, but on Wednesday she claimed she could not remember the email.“I don’t recall,” she said, looking at the document that was handed to her by a court officer. Judge Engoron has already found that Mr. Trump and his co-defendants did, in fact, commit fraud. He granted Ms. James’s request for partial summary judgment in her favor on her fraud claim against the Trump Organization in a decision on September 26.Based on that decision, Judge Engoron has revoked Mr. Trump’s licenses to do business in New York — tantamount to an order ending the Trump real estate empire in the Empire State. That order was stayed by an appellate court until it can hear an appeal. What remains for Judge Engoron to decide are the six other legal claims the attorney general’s lawsuit alleges against the Trump Organization. These include submitting false financial records, insurance fraud, and conspiracy. The judge must decide who, if anyone, is liable for these claims. Finally, the court must decide whether to fine anyone and, if so, how much. Ms. James is asking for $250 million with additional interest. Unlike her father and her two brothers, who were spared cross-examination from the Trump Organization lawyers, Ms. Trump was also questioned by the defense attorneys. She used the opportunity to tell the court how pleased Deutsche Bank had been to work with the Trump Organization, calling the properties “crown jewels” in their real estate portfolios. When asked about the Trump Organization’s relationship to Deutsche Bank’s Rosemary Vrablic, Ms. Trump said, “she expressed tremendous excitement to have our account.” Ms. Trump related how her father had a “deep and nostalgic love” for the Doral property, and how he had told her stories of visiting the property with his own father. The attorney general, Ms. James, had told reporters outside the State Supreme Courthouse in the morning that Ms. Trump would be the last witness the prosecution would call. But after Ms. Trump was excused at the end of the day, Ms. James’s attorneys suggested that they may ask the former financial chief of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, who was briefly jailed at Rikers Island, to take the stand again. The attorney general has had a total of 25 witnesses. Speaking about Ms. Trump, Ms. James remarked, “At the end of the day, this case is about fraudulent statements about the financial condition that she benefited from.” She added, “Despite the fact that she was very, very nice, very friendly, facts basically demonstrate the truth.”Unlike her father, or her brothers, Ivanka Trump thanked the court officer every time he handed her a document of evidence. The Trump Organization’s lawyers said that they would ask for a directed verdict on Thursday to get the case thrown out. But Judge Engoron will most likely dismiss their attempt, as he previously did during testimony by Mr. Trump’s nemesis and ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, telling the attorney’s “there is enough evidence to fill this courtroom.” The defense team is scheduled to call its first witness on Monday, November 13.

‘I Don’t Recall’: A Poised Ivanka Trump Doesn’t Give an Inch as She Testifies at Her Father’s Fraud Trial

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