Ivanka Trump takes witness stand in father’s fraud trial

Ivanka Trump is on the witness stand inside a lower Manhattan courtroom after exhausting her attempts to avoid testifying in a trial that threatens her family’s business and vast real-estate empire.

Donald Trump’s oldest daughter walked briskly into New York Supreme Court on Wednesday morning in a dark suit and smiled as she entered a third-floor courtroom.

She is the final witness presented by New York Attorney General Letitia James in the sixth week of a trial that could last until Christmas.

Her appearance comes a week after tetimony from her brothers and two days after testimony from her father, who was scheduled to be the headlining final act for the attorney general’s case.

But Ivanka Trump’s failed appeals to block her testimony shifted the attorney general’s witness schedule, making her Ms James’s last chance to put a Trump family member on the stand.

Still, the questions from Ms James’s lawyers are likely to focus on several transactions that allegedly involved fraudulent financial statements at the heart of the case.

Across more than 200 pages, Ms James alleges that Mr Trump and his co-defendants materially overvalued his assets by as much as $2.2bn a year over a decade.

Judge Arthur Engoron has already found the defendants liable for fraud.

Ivanka Trump is not one of them – she successfully removed herself from the lawsuit earlier this year, leaving behind her father and brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump among the 15 defendants.

The lawsuit, however, targets at least two of her deals.

According to the lawsuit, “Ms Trump was aware that the transactions included a personal guaranty from Mr Trump that required him to provide annual statements of financial condition,” documents at the centre of the case that were handed over to financial institutions for favourable rates and terms but included grossly inflated values of the former president’s assets and net worth.

In 2013, the Trump Organization obtained a ground lease from the federal General Services Administration to redevelop the Old Post Office into a hotel. Ms Trump “captained” the project, according to the attorney general’s office.

The Trumps obtained a $170m loan for construction through Deutsche Bank, which required Mr Trump to certify the accuracy of the statements of financial condition he used to secure the loan.

In May 2022, the Trump Organization sold the property for $375m, a $100m profit, “the result of the loan he was able to obtain by using his false and misleading statements,” according to the complaint.

She also will likely be asked about the penthouse in Trump Tower, which was introduced into evidence and heavily scrutinised by investigators.

In 2011, she signed a rental agreement with an option to buy it, writing in her memoir The Trump Cards that she paid market value, not an “insider” price.

The lawsuit alleges she had an option to buy it for $8.5m, though the Trump Organization’s financial statements valued the property at $20.82m.

This is a developing story