When she sat for a taped deposition in front of members of Congress investigating her father’s attempts to overturn election results, Ivanka Trump revealed that she “accepted” that his false claims were, in fact, false.
Clips from her eight-hour-long testimony to the House select committee, replayed on large screens filling a crowded room inside the Capitol, directly undermined Donald Trump’s persistent lie, one that continues to fuel his ambitions for his return to the White House in 2024.
On 8 November, Ivanka Trump will testify in an open courtroom in another case, one that could land a significant blow against her family’s business and vast real-estate empire as part of a trial stemming from a lawsuit targeting her father and brothers.
Her testimony inside a lower Manhattan courtroom arrives two days after Mr Trump’s, whose verbal outbursts from the witness stand this week unloaded on the case, the presiding judge and the attorney general suing him for fraud.
After she failed to block a subpoena for her appearance on the witness stand, Ms Trump will testify as the final witness for the prosecution, which has called on more than a dozen witnesses over six weeks to build on a case alleging widespread fraud within the Trump Organization and the former president at the helm.
Following her testimony, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James will hand the case to the defence, which is expected to introduce another round of witness testimony through 15 December, according to Mr Trump’s attorneys.
Ms Trump successfully removed herself as a defendant in the case earlier this year, leaving her father and brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump among the 15 defendants on trial for defrauding banks and investors by grossly inflating Mr Trump’s net worth and assets to gain more favourable financing terms.
The attorney general’s lawsuit, across more than 200 pages, alleges that Mr Trump and his co-defendants materially overvalued his assets by as much as $2.2bn a year over a decade.
Though she is no longer a defendant in the case, Ms Trump “remains financially and professionally intertwined” with the Trump Organization and “can be called as a person still under their control,” according to a recent filing from the attorney general.
Her former address at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue was “consistently used by Ms Trump for transacting business through three separate entities” under or partially under her control, the filing argues.
Court filings from Ms Trump’s attorneys failed to convince a judge that the attorney general “is effectively trying to force her back into this case from which she was dismissed.”
“Ms Trump is not a party in this action. Nor is Ms Trump a New York resident. It is black-letter law that, given those two facts, Ms Trump is beyond the jurisdiction of this court,” they argued.
She “will suffer undue hardship” if she is “required to testify at trial in New York in the middle of a school week, in a case she has already been dismissed from, before her appeal is heard,” according to her attorneys.
Judge Arthur Engoron also rejected her attorneys’ attempts to film her testimony remotely.
During a hearing last month, attorney Christopher Kise asked the judge whether he would allow a taped deposition instead, so that she “doesn’t have to leave her family and three children to come to New York.”
“I want to see her in person,” Judge Engoron said. “That’s how we prefer testimony.”
Ms Trump “has clearly availed herself of the privilege of doing business in New York,” he argued.
Donald Trump Jr ran a revocable trust to manage his father’s assets while he was in the White House. Eric Trump, meanwhile, ran the Trump Organization’s day-to-day business. In his trial testimony, Mr Trump described his eldest son as a “hard-working boy”. Donald Jr and Eric Trump were also “impressive in business.”
Ivanka Trump, once considered by one of the Trumps’ chief lenders as the “heir apparent” of her father’s empire, left the Trump Organization in 2017 to support her father in the White House. She previously held an “executive vice president” title shared with her brothers.
Ivanka Trump, right, boards Air Force One with her father Donald Trump and her older brother Donald Trump Jr, right, in January 2021
