NEW YORK—Ivanka Trump was the last of the witnesses called by the New York Attorney General’s office in its case against her father, former President Donald Trump, and the Trump Organization’s top executives.
The former president’s older daughter testified on Nov. 8 about her involvement up through 2016—about matters outside the case’s statute of limitations.
“I am not an accountant,” she said early into her testimony, echoing her brothers’ testimonies that they hadn’t been personally involved in the creating of the Trump Organization statements of financial condition (SFC) that are at the center of the case.
“Did you have any role in preparing Donald J. Trump’s statements of financial condition?” she was asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Ms. Trump answered.
Ms. Trump was an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, holding the same title as her brothers, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., still do. She left the organization in January 2017 to take an adviser position in the White House alongside her father. Over the summer, an appeals court decision that set a statute of limitations on the case dismissed Ms. Trump as a defendant.
New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the civil fraud case against President Trump and his family’s companies last September, accusing him of inflating his net worth by up to $2.2 billion per year in financial statements, thereby defrauding the state by making banks and insurers take on more risk and earn less on interest than they would have otherwise. The former president has consistently denied all wrongdoing.
She is seeking $250 million in penalties, a figure partially based on what the state attorney’s expert witness calculated Trump Organization could have paid had its SFC totals been lower. Ms. James also seeks the canceling of Trump Organization business certificates and to bar the defendants from doing business in the state for five years.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron is presiding over the case’s bench trial and has already ruled in a summary judgment for Ms. James, finding that President Trump inflated his net worth, and canceled his business certificates.
No one knows how the dissolution of the Trump Organization—which isn’t a corporation but an umbrella name for President Trump’s numerous holding companies—will play out.
An appeals court has paused Justice Engoron’s order that a third-party receiver handle the dissolving of these companies immediately, while defense attorneys seek to overturn the decision in the appellate court. They argued that the sudden disappearance of these companies would affect the livelihood of hundreds of Trump Organization employees, and they claimed the judge hadn’t thoroughly considered the effects of his order.
Old Post Office
While working at the Trump Organization, Ms. Trump focused on the redevelopment of the Old Post Office building in Washington.“[I] spent enormous time shepherding those buildings through redevelopment,” she testified. Ms. Trump spent most of her time at the family business under Andy Weiss, head of development and reconstruction, she said, and her brothers had been on this project as well.
The Old Post Office, a historic property, was leased by DJT Holdings LLC in 2013, and then developed into the Trump International Hotel Washington, opening in 2016. It closed in May 2022 and was sold and reopened the same year as the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC.
During cross-examination, Ms. Trump again confirmed that she wasn’t responsible for developing the methodology used in the SFCs and didn’t recall being asked about them by those they had worked with.
She gave more details about her work at the family business and said she was less involved in the golf developments and had spent much of her time on the “herculean” Old Post Office conversion, which included renovating more than 700 rooms. She had also described the proposal for the conversion, and how the project had been viewed as “a very successful public-private partnership.”
Ms. Trump added that her experience working with the federal government in this project was “positive,” prompting defense attorneys to add for the record that “the government is sitting here laughing.”
She clarified that she has been on the record in the past speaking about the positive feedback received from congressional representatives in the project, one reason being that she had committed to hiring within the district.
“I believe they thought we had over-delivered on the initial proposal,” she added. “They were very happy.”
Statute of Limitations
Ms. Trump was questioned by state attorneys about her involvement in other projects, including obtaining financing for the Doral development in Miami with a loan from Deutsche Bank.She said she couldn’t recall communications and terms from 2011, which she was presented with during the testimony. That prompted defense attorney Chris Kise to once again raise an objection due to the statute of limitations.
“I’m very aware of the statute of limitations cutoff. I believe part of this is potentially relevant to the injunctive relief the plaintiff has requested. So, overruled,” Justice Engoron said.
Mr. Kise later objected again, saying, “I hope the court, when we start our case next week, offers us this extraordinary latitude.”
Throughout the trial, the judge has allowed evidence and testimony on matters from outside the statute of limitations, ruling that they were admissible if they could be tied to charges that fell within the statute of limitations. Mr. Kise objected to that line of questioning at length on Nov. 8, arguing that a loan proposal Ms. Trump may have worked on years before the statute of limitations period couldn’t be connected to allegedly false financial statements compiled years later.
The June appeals court ruling had limited the case to transactions completed after Feb. 6, 2016, and claims accrued after July 13, 2014.
Ms. Trump was asked several questions about a 2011 financing, which she was unable to answer, saying either she had no recollection or wasn’t involved with what she believed were draft and not final terms. She also said she couldn’t recall many of the details from a 2016 loan proposal she had been involved in, according to the correspondence shown at the trial. She was also asked about communications she had with her husband, Jared Kushner, who also works in real estate.
Contested Testimony
While Ms. Trump had originally sought to avoid testifying, an appeal regarding the attorney general’s subpoena was denied by Justice Engoron and rejected later again in the appeals court. Her attorney had argued that she no longer lives in New York, only visiting a few days out of the year, and no longer works at the Trump Organization.Ms. James told reporters outside the courthouse early on Nov. 8 that Ms. Trump “secured negotiated loans to obtain favorable terms” based on the SFCs in the center of the case, and therefore her testimony was necessary.
“She was very much involved,” Ms. James said, claiming that Ms. Trump personally benefited from fraud. “She’s inextricably tied to the Trump Organization and these properties.”
President Trump denounced the decision in a social media post the day before.
“Now they are trying to bring Ivanka into the case, despite the Court of Appeals ruling that she cannot be charged. Sad!” he wrote.
Defense attorney Alina Habba claimed the attorney general had three years to prepare a case but failed to prove it in court.
Ms. Habba declined to name her first witness, but said, “It'll be great.”
“You have to understand, we have nothing to hide.”
There will be a motions hearing on Nov. 9; the trial will continue next week with the defense presenting its side.
