Dressed in a double-breasted navy pantsuit and a white blouse, Ivanka Trump testified after unsuccessfully challenging a subpoena from Attorney General Tish James’ office.
Ivanka Trump previously worked at the Trump Organization but left the company to work for her father in the White House in 2017. She had originally been a co-defendant in James’ lawsuit, which accuses Donald Trump, his adult sons and their business associates of fraudulently inflating his net worth in order to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers. An appeals court dismissed her from the lawsuit this past summer.
Her account of the Deutsche Bank loan negotiations was perhaps the most significant piece of her testimony.
A lawyer for James’ office presented evidence showing the bank had initially proposed that Donald Trump be required to maintain a minimum net worth of $3 billion “excluding any value related to the guarantor’s brand value.”
“It doesn’t get better than this. Let’s discuss asap,” Ivanka Trump wrote in an email to Trump Organization colleagues, including Jason Greenblatt, another executive at the company.
At the time, Trump’s financial statements, which the judge ruled prior to the trial were fraudulent, claimed his net worth was more than $4 billion. According to James’ office, however, his true net worth was closer to $1.5 billion.
In response to Ivanka Trump’s email, Greenblatt wrote that “the net worth covenants and DJT indebtedness limitations would seem to me to be a problem?”
Ivanka Trump then proposed that the net worth minimum be lowered to $2 billion, according to evidence presented by the attorney general’s office, and Trump and the bank eventually settled on a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion.
During cross-examination, a lawyer for the defense questioned her about Deutsche Bank “courting” the Trump family’s business, presumably seeking to establish a record that the bank didn’t believe it had been defrauded by the Trumps.
Trump’s lawyers are expected to begin presenting their case on Monday.
English (US)