Ivanka Trump took the stand at her father and brothers' Manhattan Supreme Court civil fraud trial Wednesday as the last witness for the New York attorney general [AG], striking a far more polite tone than her father had earlier this week.
Ivanka sounded apologetic at times, amused at others as she responded to questions about her knowledge of the financial statements central to the case that inflated her dad's net worth as he secured billions in loans.
"Those weren't things that I was privy to," she said, flashing a smile. "As I said to you [a year ago] and say to you now, I [wasn't] involved with his financial statements."
Trump's elder daughter took her seat in the witness box at around 10 am [1500 GMT], where she was expected to spend an entire day under questioning by state lawyer Louis Solomon.
Ivanka was initially a defendant in the case, winning dismissal on appeal in June after arguing the claims were too old. She left her role at the Trump Organization as executive vice president of acquisitions and development in 2017 to work in her father's White House and now lives in Florida.
The AG's September 2022 lawsuit says she played a "key role" in securing lucrative loan terms for Trump's Doral golf resort in Miami and heading leasing negotiations for the Old Post Office hotel in Washington, DC.
She told the court she had been "very focused" on redevelopment of the two properties.
"I spent an enormous amount of time shepherding those two properties through development," Ivanka testified.
In his testimony Monday, state lawyers brought the tally of ill-gotten proceeds Trump gained by his routinely inflating his worth to more than $300 million when he acknowledged the DC hotel's 2022 $375 million sale netted him $126 million and his eldest three kids $4 million apiece.
The AG says the lucrative sale was only possible because of a 2013 loan from Deutsche Bank that Ivanka helped him secure with bogus statements. She's described as the Trump Org's primary liaison with the team of bankers that lent Trump most of the hundreds of millions he borrowed between 2011 and 2022 at "unparalleled rates."
"It doesn't get better than this," Ivanka wrote of Deutsche's loan terms in a December 2011 email shown in court Tuesday.
Ivanka was soft-spoken and appeared relaxed, claiming she could not recall numerous emails presented on screen she said Solomon "reminded" her of. She said she wasn't aware of having had a role in prepping the statements, providing the valuations within, or ever reviewing them before they were finalized.
She fought the subpoena to testify in vain, ultimately withdrawing her appeal Friday. In rejecting her efforts to get out of the testimony, Judge Arthur Engoron cited business opportunities she continues to profit from in her native New York and that she still owns property here.
She's since he left office and during his current presidential bid. Her testimony comes fresh on the heels of Monday, in which the former president lobbed insults at Engoron and the AG amid conceding involvement in financial fraud.
Trump, his eldest sons, and former top executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney were found liable for fraud before the trial started for inflating his net worth on financial statements to maximize their profits in business deals illegally.
Engoron's ruling was based solely on evidence Trump and his crew . He'll rule on the AG's six remaining causes of action and how much Trump and his associates should have to pay at the end of the trial.
