Ivanka grilled on Donald Trump’s net worth in fraud trial testimony

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 testimony 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.

The judge asked Ms Trump, speaking softly from the witness stand, to move closer to the microphone in the echo-filled courtroom.

She has smiled through most of her responses, answering deliberately and in full sentences in stark contrast to her father’s meandering half-finished thoughts. But she has repeatedly stated she doesn’t “recall” much of anything about emails and documents surrounding allegedly fraudulent business deals under the attorney general’s scrutiny.

The questions from Ms James’s lawyers targeted 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.

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 one email from 2011, lenders with Deutsche Bank financing the Doral resort in Miami required Mr Trump to maintain a “minimum net worth” of $3bn – excluding “any value” related to his “brand value.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly argued that his statements of financial condition were lower, not inflated, because his “brand” was excluded.

Ivanka Trump shared those loan terms in an email with the Trump Organization’s Allen Weisselberg, Jason Greenblatt and David Orowitz: “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

In a series of targeted questions about those statements of financial condition, Ms Trump told counsel that “you showed me a few documents and emails and correspondence which references financial statements broadly but that was not something I was involved in.”

“I’m not involved with his personal financial statements,” she added. “I didn’t know about his personal statements, per se, other than what you showed me.”

Asked whether she had “any role” preparing Mr Trump’s statements of financial condition, she said: “Not that I’m aware of.”

Did she provide the valuations for any of the assets in them? “Not that I recall.”

And did she ever review those statements before they were finalised? “I don’t recall that, no.”

Counsel with the attorney general’s office also are questioning her about a penthouse in Trump Park Avenue, 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 Card 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.

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.

This is a developing story